Ruben Cantu
Encyclopedia
Ruben Montoya Cantu was a Texan
who was executed for murder
. During the years following the conviction, the surviving victim, the co-defendant, the District Attorney, and the jury forewoman have all made public statements that cast doubt on Cantu's guilty verdict and death sentence.
barrio. The neighborhood was home to a loose band of tough kids called the Grey Eagles, of which Cantu became a leader, despite being rather small and in special-ed classes at school. By age 15, he was stealing cars for an organized auto theft ring, often spending days at a time driving stolen cars to Mexico
for cash. At a time when the San Antonio Police Department
was embroiled in scandal, with vigilantes and drug-dealing officers well known to the community, Cantu was stealing cars and dodging the police. His older brothers had been arrested on drug and theft charges, but despite several run-ins with the police, Ruben was never convicted of anything before the November 1984 crime that led to his execution.
males at gunpoint. The two victims, Pedro Gomez (25 or 35) and Juan Moreno (19), had been workmen sleeping on floor mattresses at a construction site, guarding against burglary, as a water heater had been recently stolen from the work site. The two victims were sleeping in their work clothes, with their pockets full of their cash earnings at the time of the robbery. Cantu and Garza were carrying a rifle, which they used to rob the two men of their wristwatches. As they tried to take their cash, they were interrupted by Gomez's attempt to retrieve a pistol hidden under his mattress. Gomez was shot at least nine times by the boys' rifle, dying instantly, and Moreno was also shot as many as nine times by the same rifle. Thinking they had killed both men, the two teens then fled the scene. Juan Moreno survived the attack, and was able to leave the house and call for help shortly after the event, though he lost one lung, one kidney, and part of his stomach.
Short on leads other than Moreno's description of two Latinos aged roughly 14 and 19, a neighborhood beat officer passed along a rumor from the halls of South San Antonio High School, where Cantu was in ninth grade. A shop teacher reported that three kids had been involved in the robbery and murder and that students were saying Cantu had done the killing. Questioned just before his arrest, Garza identified Cantu, saying he "saw Ruben come running out of the house" according to a detective's notes. The key trial
witness
, however, was Juan Moreno, the shooting survivor, who repeatedly identified Ruben Cantu in court.
Years later, in fact a decade after Cantu was executed, Moreno recanted his story, as did Garza.
The case went cold, and no suspect was arrested. About four months after the robbery-murder, Cantu shot Joe De La Luz, an off-duty, plainclothes police officer, at the Scabaroo Lounge, a bar near Cantu's home. According to Cantu, the officer threatened him, revealing his concealed weapon, provoking Cantu (who was also armed) to fire at De La Luz whom he did not know was a police officer. According to De La Luz, he was shot four times by Cantu despite no provocation.
The case against Cantu for the barroom shooting had to be dropped, as police had illegally searched Cantu's home, rendering the case unprosecutable.
Officer De La Luz survived the shooting and a friend of his who worked homicide, Sgt. Bill Ewell, decided to immediately reopen the murder investigation against Ruben Cantu. On the following day, Sgt. Ewell sent an investigator to Juan Moreno a fourth time, this time showing Cantu's photo along with four others. Again, Juan Moreno did not identify Cantu as one of his attackers. But he did provide Cantu's name. One day later, a third homicide detective picked up Moreno (an undocumented immigrant from Mexico at the time), drove him to the police station, sat him down and showed him the same group of photos that included Cantu. On that third attempt, Moreno positively identified the photo of Cantu as being one of his attackers.
Years later Moreno would say now that the person who shot him had very curly hair and he was never shown a photo of the real shooter.
David Garza, Cantu's codefendant, has since admitted involvement in the burglary, assault and murder. He says he did go inside the house with another boy, did participate in the robbery, and saw the murder take place, but that his accomplice was not Ruben Cantu. According to Garza, the real murderer was an elementary school friend of Cantu. This person, whose only criminal record is a single misdemeanor domestic assault conviction, denied that he had anything to do with the robbery and murder when he was interviewed by the Houston Chronicle
in 2005.
d in a capital murder case. I was framed because I shot an off-duty police officer named Joe De La Luz."
On August 24, 1993, at 22 minutes after midnight, at the age of 26, Cantu died by lethal injection
, becoming the fifth juvenile offender to be executed by Texas. His final request was for a piece of bubble gum, which was denied. Asked if he had a last statement, he said, "No, sir."
Bexar County (San Antonio) District Attorney, Susan Reed
, indicated to Rick Casey of the Houston Chronicle
that she may bring a murder by perjury
charge against Moreno, the surviving victim of the robbery-shooting and key prosecution witness. Juan Moreno is currently a building contractor living in east San Antonio with a teenage child of his own.
In 2006 Reed said that she was "deeply skeptical" of someone who recants testimony they gave twenty years previously but agreed that Cantu should not have been prosecuted as a death penalty case.
In 2007 Reed issued a report finding that Ruben Cantu was guilty of the crime for which Texas executed him in 1993, however critics say the report is compromised by the fact Reed was the judge who rejected Cantu's appeal in 1988 and set his execution date in 1993. Reed assigned to the Cantu case two investigators, Mike Beers and James Moore, who were allegedly recorded ridiculing the case in a phone conversation and openly mocking the notion that Cantu might have been innocent.
"We did the best we could with the information we had, but with a little extra work, a little extra effort, maybe we'd have gotten the right information. The bottom line is, an innocent person was put to death for it. We all have our finger in that." — Miriam Ward, forewoman of the jury that convicted Cantu.
"It's so questionable. There are so many places where it could break down. We have a system that permits people to be convicted based on evidence that could be wrong because it's mistaken or because it's corrupt." — Sam Millsap Jr., the former district attorney
who made the decision to charge Cantu with capital murder. He also indicated he never should have sought the death penalty in a case based on the testimony of an eyewitness who identified Cantu only after police officers showed him Cantu's photo three separate times.
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
who was executed for murder
Murder
Murder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human being, and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...
. During the years following the conviction, the surviving victim, the co-defendant, the District Attorney, and the jury forewoman have all made public statements that cast doubt on Cantu's guilty verdict and death sentence.
Background
Ruben Cantu grew up with his mother and father, until the age of 14, when the couple split up, with Ruben's mother moving 20 miles (30 km) away, and Ruben and his father continuing to live in a trailer in a crime-ridden south San AntonioSan Antonio, Texas
San Antonio is the seventh-largest city in the United States of America and the second-largest city within the state of Texas, with a population of 1.33 million. Located in the American Southwest and the south–central part of Texas, the city serves as the seat of Bexar County. In 2011,...
barrio. The neighborhood was home to a loose band of tough kids called the Grey Eagles, of which Cantu became a leader, despite being rather small and in special-ed classes at school. By age 15, he was stealing cars for an organized auto theft ring, often spending days at a time driving stolen cars to Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
for cash. At a time when the San Antonio Police Department
San Antonio Police Department
The San Antonio Police Department is the municipal police department of San Antonio; it is headquartered in Downtown San Antonio.The department can trace its beginnings to 1846 when the first City Marshal was appointed. The city had its laws enforced only by Texas Rangers and the City Marshals...
was embroiled in scandal, with vigilantes and drug-dealing officers well known to the community, Cantu was stealing cars and dodging the police. His older brothers had been arrested on drug and theft charges, but despite several run-ins with the police, Ruben was never convicted of anything before the November 1984 crime that led to his execution.
Convicted of armed robbery and murder
The prosecution's case at the trial that convicted Ruben Cantu is summarized as follows: On the night of November 8, 1984, at approximately 11:30 p.m., Ruben Cantu (age 17 at the time) and his friend David Garza (15), broke into a vacant San Antonio house under construction at 605 Briggs Street, and robbed two HispanicHispanic
Hispanic is a term that originally denoted a relationship to Hispania, which is to say the Iberian Peninsula: Andorra, Gibraltar, Portugal and Spain. During the Modern Era, Hispanic sometimes takes on a more limited meaning, particularly in the United States, where the term means a person of ...
males at gunpoint. The two victims, Pedro Gomez (25 or 35) and Juan Moreno (19), had been workmen sleeping on floor mattresses at a construction site, guarding against burglary, as a water heater had been recently stolen from the work site. The two victims were sleeping in their work clothes, with their pockets full of their cash earnings at the time of the robbery. Cantu and Garza were carrying a rifle, which they used to rob the two men of their wristwatches. As they tried to take their cash, they were interrupted by Gomez's attempt to retrieve a pistol hidden under his mattress. Gomez was shot at least nine times by the boys' rifle, dying instantly, and Moreno was also shot as many as nine times by the same rifle. Thinking they had killed both men, the two teens then fled the scene. Juan Moreno survived the attack, and was able to leave the house and call for help shortly after the event, though he lost one lung, one kidney, and part of his stomach.
Short on leads other than Moreno's description of two Latinos aged roughly 14 and 19, a neighborhood beat officer passed along a rumor from the halls of South San Antonio High School, where Cantu was in ninth grade. A shop teacher reported that three kids had been involved in the robbery and murder and that students were saying Cantu had done the killing. Questioned just before his arrest, Garza identified Cantu, saying he "saw Ruben come running out of the house" according to a detective's notes. The key trial
Jury trial
A jury trial is a legal proceeding in which a jury either makes a decision or makes findings of fact which are then applied by a judge...
witness
Witness
A witness is someone who has firsthand knowledge about an event, or in the criminal justice systems usually a crime, through his or her senses and can help certify important considerations about the crime or event. A witness who has seen the event first hand is known as an eyewitness...
, however, was Juan Moreno, the shooting survivor, who repeatedly identified Ruben Cantu in court.
Years later, in fact a decade after Cantu was executed, Moreno recanted his story, as did Garza.
Police revive investigation after Cantu shoots off-duty officer
According to Juan Moreno, and consistent with police records, he was visited by police in the hospital the day after the shooting. But, due to the severity his wounds, he was unable to speak and could barely move. Five days later, in a second interview, Moreno was shown a number of photos. Cantu's photo was not included and Moreno did not identify any of the people shown in the photos. On December 16, detectives visited Moreno a third time and showed him another array of five photos, including one of Ruben Cantu, who lived across the street from Moreno's job site where the crime occurred. He did not identify Ruben or anyone else from the photos shown to him during that police interview.The case went cold, and no suspect was arrested. About four months after the robbery-murder, Cantu shot Joe De La Luz, an off-duty, plainclothes police officer, at the Scabaroo Lounge, a bar near Cantu's home. According to Cantu, the officer threatened him, revealing his concealed weapon, provoking Cantu (who was also armed) to fire at De La Luz whom he did not know was a police officer. According to De La Luz, he was shot four times by Cantu despite no provocation.
The case against Cantu for the barroom shooting had to be dropped, as police had illegally searched Cantu's home, rendering the case unprosecutable.
Officer De La Luz survived the shooting and a friend of his who worked homicide, Sgt. Bill Ewell, decided to immediately reopen the murder investigation against Ruben Cantu. On the following day, Sgt. Ewell sent an investigator to Juan Moreno a fourth time, this time showing Cantu's photo along with four others. Again, Juan Moreno did not identify Cantu as one of his attackers. But he did provide Cantu's name. One day later, a third homicide detective picked up Moreno (an undocumented immigrant from Mexico at the time), drove him to the police station, sat him down and showed him the same group of photos that included Cantu. On that third attempt, Moreno positively identified the photo of Cantu as being one of his attackers.
Years later Moreno would say now that the person who shot him had very curly hair and he was never shown a photo of the real shooter.
David Garza, Cantu's codefendant, has since admitted involvement in the burglary, assault and murder. He says he did go inside the house with another boy, did participate in the robbery, and saw the murder take place, but that his accomplice was not Ruben Cantu. According to Garza, the real murderer was an elementary school friend of Cantu. This person, whose only criminal record is a single misdemeanor domestic assault conviction, denied that he had anything to do with the robbery and murder when he was interviewed by the Houston Chronicle
Houston Chronicle
The Houston Chronicle is the largest daily newspaper in Texas, USA, headquartered in the Houston Chronicle Building in Downtown Houston. , it is the ninth-largest newspaper by circulation in the United States...
in 2005.
Executed by the state of Texas
Shortly after being convicted by a jury of first degree murder and sentenced, Cantu wrote a note to the people of San Antonio saying: "I have been frameFrameup
A frame-up or setup is an American term referring to the act of framing someone, that is, providing false evidence or false testimony in order to falsely prove someone guilty of a crime....
d in a capital murder case. I was framed because I shot an off-duty police officer named Joe De La Luz."
On August 24, 1993, at 22 minutes after midnight, at the age of 26, Cantu died by lethal injection
Lethal injection
Lethal injection is the practice of injecting a person with a fatal dose of drugs for the express purpose of causing the immediate death of the subject. The main application for this procedure is capital punishment, but the term may also be applied in a broad sense to euthanasia and suicide...
, becoming the fifth juvenile offender to be executed by Texas. His final request was for a piece of bubble gum, which was denied. Asked if he had a last statement, he said, "No, sir."
Recent developments
Sam Millsap, who was the District Attorney presiding over the Cantu case, proclaimed himself a "lifelong supporter of the death penalty" in his commentary published in the San Antonio Express-News in the year 2000. In a December 2005 interview with the Express-News, Millsap expressed a newfound opposition to capital punishment. In that 2005 story, Millsap, an attorney in private practice at the time of the interview, says his decision to oppose the death penalty was affirmed, as evidence surfaced that Ruben Cantu was very likely innocent, when prosecuted by Millsap's office, and ultimately executed by the state of Texas. According to the 2005 Express-News story, "'It is troubling to me personally. No decision is more frightening than seeking the death penalty. We owe ourselves certainty on it.' He had that degree of certainty in the 1980s when he was the district attorney, 'when I was in my 30s and knew everything.' Now, he says, 'There is no way to have that kind of certainty.'" He went on to say that if Cantu was innocent, that means the person who committed the murder remains free and that "the misconduct by police officers could be addressed today."Bexar County (San Antonio) District Attorney, Susan Reed
Susan Reed
Susan D. Reed is the Criminal District Attorney of Bexar County, Texas. Her office was involved in controversy surrounding the disputed murder conviction of Ruben Cantu, a man executed by lethal injection in 1993 by Texas...
, indicated to Rick Casey of the Houston Chronicle
Houston Chronicle
The Houston Chronicle is the largest daily newspaper in Texas, USA, headquartered in the Houston Chronicle Building in Downtown Houston. , it is the ninth-largest newspaper by circulation in the United States...
that she may bring a murder by perjury
Perjury
Perjury, also known as forswearing, is the willful act of swearing a false oath or affirmation to tell the truth, whether spoken or in writing, concerning matters material to a judicial proceeding. That is, the witness falsely promises to tell the truth about matters which affect the outcome of the...
charge against Moreno, the surviving victim of the robbery-shooting and key prosecution witness. Juan Moreno is currently a building contractor living in east San Antonio with a teenage child of his own.
In 2006 Reed said that she was "deeply skeptical" of someone who recants testimony they gave twenty years previously but agreed that Cantu should not have been prosecuted as a death penalty case.
In 2007 Reed issued a report finding that Ruben Cantu was guilty of the crime for which Texas executed him in 1993, however critics say the report is compromised by the fact Reed was the judge who rejected Cantu's appeal in 1988 and set his execution date in 1993. Reed assigned to the Cantu case two investigators, Mike Beers and James Moore, who were allegedly recorded ridiculing the case in a phone conversation and openly mocking the notion that Cantu might have been innocent.
Quotes
Cantu "shot an officer who worked with me. It was difficult to get [the witness] to make the identification. We weren't able to get him for the police shooting, but we were able to get him for the murder." — Sgt. Bill Ewell (now retired), who headed the investigation against Cantu."We did the best we could with the information we had, but with a little extra work, a little extra effort, maybe we'd have gotten the right information. The bottom line is, an innocent person was put to death for it. We all have our finger in that." — Miriam Ward, forewoman of the jury that convicted Cantu.
"It's so questionable. There are so many places where it could break down. We have a system that permits people to be convicted based on evidence that could be wrong because it's mistaken or because it's corrupt." — Sam Millsap Jr., the former district attorney
District attorney
In many jurisdictions in the United States, a District Attorney is an elected or appointed government official who represents the government in the prosecution of criminal offenses. The district attorney is the highest officeholder in the jurisdiction's legal department and supervises a staff of...
who made the decision to charge Cantu with capital murder. He also indicated he never should have sought the death penalty in a case based on the testimony of an eyewitness who identified Cantu only after police officers showed him Cantu's photo three separate times.
See also
- List of juvenile offenders executed in the United States
- List of individuals executed in Texas
- Capital punishment in TexasCapital punishment in TexasCapital punishment has been used in the U.S. state of Texas and its predecessor entities since 1819.As of 16 November 2011, 1,228 individuals have been executed. Only Virginia has executed more individuals overall; however, since the death penalty was re-instituted in the United States in the...
- Capital punishment in the United StatesCapital punishment in the United StatesCapital punishment in the United States, in practice, applies only for aggravated murder and more rarely for felony murder. Capital punishment was a penalty at common law, for many felonies, and was enforced in all of the American colonies prior to the Declaration of Independence...
External links
- Texas State records on Ruben Cantu
- Additional Offender Information on Ruben M. Cantu
- Transcript of January 6, 2006 edition of PBS television's NOW public affairs program, on the Ruben Cantu controversy.
- Did Texas execute an innocent man? investigative article by Lise Olsen, Houston ChronicleHouston ChronicleThe Houston Chronicle is the largest daily newspaper in Texas, USA, headquartered in the Houston Chronicle Building in Downtown Houston. , it is the ninth-largest newspaper by circulation in the United States...
- Doubts Surface on Guilt of Man Executed in Texas Audio interview of Houston Chronicle reporter Lise Olsen, by Madeleine Brand of National Public Radio.
- Statement from NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, including comprehensive police and court records, investigative news articles, and video witness interviews.
- Final Meal Requests. Texas Department of Criminal JusticeTexas Department of Criminal JusticeThe Texas Department of Criminal Justice is a department of the government of the state of Texas. The TDCJ is responsible for statewide criminal justice for adult offenders, including managing offenders in state prisons, state jails and private correctional facilities, funding and certain...
(2003-09-12). Archived from the original on 2003-12-02. Retrieved on 2007-11-22. - The Case of Ruben Cantu, from The Skeptical Juror web site.
