Bexar DA is target of plea:Petition says probe of Cantu case is a 'sham' [View All]

[Judi Lynn]

Aug. 17, 2006, 12:36AM
Bexar DA is target of plea
Petition says probe of Cantu case is a 'sham'


By LISE OLSEN and SHEILA HOTCHKIN
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has been asked to halt the Bexar County district attorney's politically charged investigation into a possible wrongful execution and to name a special prosecutor to fairly examine claims that Ruben Cantu was innocent when he was put to death in 1993.

In a petition to the court filed Wednesday, Cantu's convicted accomplice in the 1984 robbery-murder claims District Attorney Susan Reed is running a "sham investigation" because she set Cantu's execution date when she was judge and because her top investigators have demonstrated bias by referring to witnesses as "bastards" and liars in recorded phone calls.

"Reed is not impartial but conflicted and her refusal to recuse herself has so marred the investigation that the public will have no confidence in the integrity of the results," the petition filed on behalf of David Garza claims.
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Cantu and Garza were convicted for a nighttime robbery at a house in a southside San Antonio neighborhood in November 1984. The assault left one Mexican construction worker dead and another critically injured.

But last year, Garza and the surviving eyewitness, Juan Moreno, both publicly claimed Cantu was innocent. A third man said Cantu was in Waco with him that day. Those claims, published in the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News, prompted the district attorney to reopen the case last year.
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http://chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/4122734.html



Ruben Cantu

Nov. 21, 2005, 3:30PM
CANTU CASE: DEATH AND DOUBT
Executed man's co-defendant says years of guilt have led him to try to clear his friend's name
Silence vow blamed for ultimate penalty
By LISE OLSEN
© 2005, Houston Chronicle

They were two teenagers who shared a deadly pact of silence: One grew up in prison tortured by a secret that might have stopped his friend's execution, and the other went to his death without revealing what he knew.

Ruben Cantu and David Garza's teenage bond was forged in the unforgiving streets on the south side of San Antonio, where the only rule they learned to respect was never to snitch.

When they were both arrested in 1985 for a neighborhood murder-robbery, Cantu, 17 at the time of the crime, insisted he was innocent and was condemned to die. Garza, 15, admitted guilt only to robbery — but not the murder — and got a deal.

Now, Garza has broken a 20-year silence with a surprising story that would appear to clear Cantu and implicate another man. Garza says he was with another neighborhood teen on Nov. 8, 1984, when they broke into a home, shot and killed one man, and seriously wounded another.

"Ruben Cantu had nothing to do with the murder, attempted murder and robbery of the two men at 605 Briggs Street. I should know," Garza wrote in a sworn statement obtained by the Houston Chronicle.

If his words are true, they provide some of the first evidence ever that the state of Texas wrongfully executed a man, who at the time of his crime was a juvenile.
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http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/3474407.htm