Ruben Cantu continues to Haunt Bexar County

Posted by lukegilman

June 28, 2007

Ruben Cantu has become a flash point on the touchy subject of capital punishment in Texas after being executed for crimes many have concluded he did not commit. As reported in the Houston Chronicle yesterday in Bexar DA calls execution justified, Bexar County DA Susan Reed has issued a report finding no merit in the claims of Cantu’s innocence. The case has become controversial in part because the DA who prosecuted the case, Sam Millsap has called the execution a mistake and apologized for it while becoming an vocal opponent of the death penalty. (briefly noted on this site in february)

Doubts about Cantu’s guilt originally surfaced through the investigative journalism of the Houston Chronicle’s Lise Olsen, whose 2005 article Did Texas Execute an Innocent Man? garnered the case national attention and brought it to the fore of the innocence debate.

Grits for Breakfast says the Ruben Cantu case shows why Texas needs an Innocence Commission.

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