Carlos Deluna

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Carlos Deluna was born on March 15th 1962. Carlos DeLuna, who was arrested for murder, was developmentally disabled and had a low IQ. He dropped out of junior high and took a series of manual jobs. He had a history of petty nonviolent crime, including robbery and car theft. DeLuna also developed a taste for huffing spray paint. He was arrested multiple times holding a can of spray paint with his hands and mouth “smeared with the stuff.” DeLuna was convicted of murder and sentenced to death by the state of Texas. On the night of February 4th,1983 a 24 year old gas station attendant named Wanda Lopez was murdered.Reporters said the young woman had been stabbed multiple time with a buckle knife. At his 1983 trial, Carlos DeLuna told the jury that on the day of the murder he had ran into Hernandez, who he'd known for the previous five years. The two men, who both lived in the southern Texas town of Corpus Christi, stopped off at a bar. Hernandez went over to a gas station, the Shamrock, to buy something, and when he didn't return DeLuna went over to see what was going on.Mrs.Lopez was killed while on the phone with the police, having just called 911 reporting a suspicious person. Police found DeLuna hiding in a truck a few blocks away. DeLuna told the jury that he saw Hernandez inside the Shamrock wrestling with a woman behind the counter. DeLuna said he was afraid and started to run. He had his own police record for sexual assault. "I just kept running because I was scared, you know." When he heard the sirens of police cars screeching towards the gas station he panicked and hid under a pickup truck where, 40 minutes after the killing, he was arrested.(Pilkington) DeLuna always maintained that he didn't do it, but waited until his tr... ... middle of paper ... ...d 10 years later in prison of complications from cirrhosis. In the meantime, he had attacked a girlfriend at her house. He stabbed her in the stomach and dragged her into the backyard to rape her and then kill her before the girlfriend’s sons chased him off. He also was arrested for threatening neighbors and dealing heroin. When he died, his mother thought so little of him that she pocketed the money that the state provided for burial expenses and let her son be buried in a potter’s field. Works Cited "The Carlos DeLuna Case: Definitive Proof That Texas Executed an Innocent Man? - The Week." The Week. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 Mar. 2014. "Carlos DeLuna." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 30 Mar. 2014. Web. 31 Mar. 2014. Pilkington, Ed. "The Wrong Carlos: How Texas Sent an Innocent Man to His Death." TheGuardian. Guardian News and Media, 16 May 2012. Web. 30 Mar. 2014.

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