together, we re building a better california. by 1993, ruben cantu had spent eight years in solitary confinement while his appeals unfolded. i just wanted him to get out. you you know, i could go over there and i was scared. it was jail, prison. i have never been locked up. it was just scary, terrifying. i was only 20 something. i was like, man, when he gets out, we are going to go do this. we are going to go do that. ruben s appellate lawyer was determined to get ruben off death row. but in appeal after appeal, ruben s case was denied in both texas and federal courts.
he shoved everything over to ruben. it wasn t me. it was ruben. if romero did implicate ruben cantu for the murder, why was he never called to testify at the up cantu trial? a transcript from a pre-trial hearing reveals that before deposition, that police beat and handcuffed romero, threw him into a wall and threatened to charge him with the offense. romero was the guy we suspected did it. he had kinky hair. the police just turned him loose. susan reed, the judge that signed ruben s death warrant was now district attorney of san antonio. under pressure to respond to lise olsen s charges of misconduct, reed ordered an internal investigation. the way the case was being
5 captions by vitac www.vitac.com on this episode of death row stories, a brutal murder in texas. he went crazy. he started shooting all over the place. lands a 17-year-old offender on death row. young people were committing very adult crimes. but with questionable evidence. there are no guns, no blood. dna, nothing. and a death sentence looming. execution wassed a midnight in those days. a d.a. has doubts. i was horrified by what i saw. a boy s life hangs in the balance. evil people are never going to change. they should be executed. there is a body in the water. he was butchered and murdered. many people proclaim their innocence. in this case, there are a
but he s executed. richard reyna was not able to save ruben s life. because the naacp hadn t hired him to investigate the case until ten years after ruben s execution. as long as no one is held accountable, these things are going to continue. people are going to be falsely accused, sentenced to die or even executed. my brother was innocent. and i just want his name cured. when it all comes out, i want the state of texas to come out and make it public and apologize to our family. the district attorney said, all we want is money. it ain t about the money. all the money in the world is not going to bring my brother back. but at least i ll have comfort knowing he s been cleared. while this case wasn t brought to lise olsen until 11 years after ruben was killed, for her, the stakes were clear. there s never been an executed offender in modern
whether it was i don t believe it it is all [ bleep ]. i was ready for just about anything. when i was contacted by lise olsen, whom i did not know, i had no idea that there had ever been a question about the result in the cantu case or that anybody was looking at it for that matter. i met with him in his office in a quiet room. we spent an hour. i took him through it step by step slowly. i showed him the fact that juan moreno had said that he had never believed that ruben cantu was the shooter. that he felt that he had to identify cantu because that s who police wanted him to identify. lise had also uncovered information about officers bill ewell and joe dilaluz, who both had a vested interest in fingering ruben cantu as the killer. both bill you ll and joe delaluz had a history of