Whoops

Just over a dozen years ago, Texas executed Reuben Cantu for a brutal murder committed during a robbery. Now, via TalkLeft, it seems a Houston Chronicle investigation has turned up pretty conclusive evidence clearing him. Cantu had, by his own admisssion, been guilty of (non-fatally) shooting a plainclothes police officer after a dispute in a pool hall. But he wasn't prosecuted because, as the officer who oversaw the investigation puts it, "There was an overreaction, and some of the evidence may have been tainted." Instead, Cantu was charged in an earlier robbery-murder, on the evidence of a lone eyewitness who now says he felt pressured by police to falsely identify Cantu—whose photo the witness had already seen and dismissed earlier. Follow up stories are here and here.