February 6, 2012

  • MoJW: Carlos de Luna

    In 1983, Wanda Lopez, a gas station clerk, was stabbed and killed. Police quickly arrested Carlos de Luna a few blocks away, hiding under a truck with no shirt and no shoes.

    He was charged for the gas station robbery and the murder. Two witnesses testified. Aguirre had seen the killer right before he entered the station, and had gone inside to warn Lopez. Baker had arrived at the station right after the slaying, and had watched the killer run away. Both identified Carlos de Luna as the killer. At the time, he had been in and out of prison and involved in several violent crimes, including injuring a police officer.

    De Luna maintained that he was innocent, claiming that an acquaintance, Carlos Hernandez, was the real killer. He claimed he had hidden from the police because he was on parole and was not permitted to drink, and also because no one would believe him. Prosecutors said there was no such person. One prosecutor said Carlos Hernandez was a "phantom". De Luna was convicted and executed in 1989.

    In fact, Carlos Hernandez was a real person, and the other prosecutor knew this. In 1999, ten years after de Luna was executed, Hernandez died. His family members began to speak out, implicating him as the actual killer. They said he'd bragged that de Luna had been blamed in his stead.

    Further investigation found that Baker, the eyewitness, told police the killer had a mustache and wore a graey flannel shirt. Hernandez had a mustache, and de Luna did not. De Luna had been arrested without a shirt. His shirt was later found, and it was white. Baker later said that he'd identified de Luna because police had said he was hiding under a truck. Lopez had been stabbed, and the store was blood-spattered, but no blood was found on de Luna's person or his clothes.

    Furthermore, his previous crimes had all been committed without a weapon. Hernandez had a violent criminal history as well, both before and after the Lopez murder, and his crimes were committed using knives.

    De Luna never confessed to the crime, not to Carroll Pickett, the priest who administered last rites, not to anyone. Both prosecutors still believe the right person was convicted. Schiwetz, the lead prosecutor in the case, states that it was because de Luna's testimony was inconsistent. He says he believes de Luna murdered Lopez without getting blood on his shirt, and then washed the blood off his shoes in wet grass. I don't think that's plausible.

    Certainly it would feel better to believe de Luna was guilty. But believing it doesn't make it true. Nor does feeling better about his guilt make him guilty.

    For more information, here are the three parts of the Chicago Tribune investigation.