Professional Documents
Culture Documents
says
By Chantal Valery | AFP 10 hrs ago
Related Content
View slideshows
That night Lopez called police for help twice to protect her from an individual with a
switchblade.
"They could have saved her, they said 'we made this arrest immediately' to overcome the
embarrassment," Liebman said.
Forty minutes after the crime Carlos DeLuna was arrested not far from the gas station.
He was identified by only one eyewitness who saw a Hispanic male running from the gas station.
But DeLuna had just shaved and was wearing a white dress shirt -- unlike the killer, who an
eyewitness said had a mustache and was wearing a grey flannel shirt.
Even though witnesses accounts were contradictory -- the killer was seen fleeing towards the
north, while DeLuna was caught in the east -- DeLuna was arrested.
"I didn't do it, but I know who did," DeLuna said at the time, saying that he saw Carlos
Hernandez entering the service station.
DeLuna said he ran from police because he was on parole and had been drinking.
Hernandez, known for using a blade in his attacks, was later jailed for murdering a woman with
the same knife. But in the trial, the lead prosecutor told the jury that Hernandez was nothing but
a "phantom" of DeLuna's imagination.
DeLuna's budget attorney even said that it was probable that Carlos Hernandez never existed.
However in 1986 a local newspaper published a photograph of Hernandez in an article on the
DeLuna case, Liebman said.
Following hasty trial DeLuna was executed by lethal injection in 1989.
Up to the day he died in prison of cirrhosis of the liver, Hernandez repeatedly admitted to
murdering Wanda Lopez, Liebman said.
"Unfortunately, the flaws in the system that wrongfully convicted and executed DeLuna -- faulty
eyewitness testimony, shoddy legal representation and prosecutorial misconduct -- continue to
send innocent men to their death today," read a statement that accompanies the report.