Air continues to go out of Ruben Cantu story
The Chronicle's hopes of winning that elusive first Pulitzer via the Victor Cantu story continue to dwindle.
Here's the latest from Lise Olsen (and Maro Robbins) on what was once thought to be the Pulitzer beat:
Once the star witness in a capital murder case, Juan Moreno is convinced that his testimony sent the wrong man to the execution chamber, but he's having trouble convincing others.
Memory lapses and apparent contradictions emerged as Moreno, a San Antonio construction worker, told Bexar County prosecutors this month that he buckled to police pressure and falsely accused a San Antonio teenager named Ruben Cantu of murder in 1985.
The Feb. 8 interview is among the final tasks in the district attorney's yearlong examination of claims that Cantu was wrongly executed in 1993 for the robbery murder of Moreno's friend, Pedro Gomez. More than four hours of questioning left prosecutors more skeptical than ever.
When asked later by reporters if he still believed Cantu was innocent, Moreno hesitated at first. A few minutes later, he insisted: "I've always known he was innocent."
Moreno had not spoken publicly since November 2005 because he had been threatened with prosecution for potentially perjuring himself at Cantu's original trial.
Moreno's own lawyer doubted the eyewitness account would be enough to conclusively establish Cantu's case as the nation's first undisputed example of an innocent man's execution. Later, Cliff Herberg, a supervisor in the district attorney's office, said it appears Moreno doesn't remember much of what happened.
"At this point, he is just spouting back the misinformation (and) lies that have been fed to him by the anti-death-penalty people," Herberg said.
Credit goes to the Chronicle for reporting the facts in this latest story, even though they cast further doubts on Moreno's reliability as a witness (and the Chronicle's efforts to win a Pulitzer by "proving" an innocent man was executed in Texas). While it is possible mistakes were made in this case, activists are going to have to produce more substantive evidence than they have so far in the Cantu affair.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 02/20/07 11:26 PM | Print | Comments (0)
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