By sudouest.fr with AFP
British director Patrick Forbes sheds light on the many mistakes that led to the execution of an innocent man after the murder of a gas station cashier in Texas in 1983.
Director Patrick Forbes hopes his documentary, “The Phantom”, will be “the spark” that will move US President Joe Biden on the death penalty with his message “very clear: an innocent has been executed”. The film, which hits theaters on July 2, traces the murder of Wanda Lopez, who was stabbed one evening in 1983 at a gas station in Corpus Christi, Texas, where she worked as a cashier.
Just before she died, the young woman called the police to report a suspicious man. The documentary, a meticulous and chilling reconstruction, opens with the recording of his last words: “Do you want them? Take them, I’ll give them to you. I’m not going to do anything to you, please! »Arrived too late to save her, the police set off in pursuit of the culprit, whom witnesses saw flee on foot. Forty minutes later, they arrest Carlos de Luna, a 20-year-old man with an already heavy locker, who is hiding under a car.
Convinced of holding the murderer, the investigators look no further, even if he claims his innocence and shows no bloodstain. During his trial, Carlos de Luna explains having fled for fear of being implicated and assures that he knows the culprit: a certain Carlos Hernandez whom he says he knew in prison.
But, faced with photos of the men of that name, he is unable to identify him. And lies at the helm weaken its credibility. The prosecutor concludes that this Carlos Hernandez is the fruit of his imagination, “a ghost”, and he is condemned to death. After all his appeals were dismissed, he was executed in 1989.
Same first name
“From there, the truth slowly began to emerge,” says Briton Patrick Forbes, who notably produced Wikileaks: secrets et lies (2012). In 2004, law professor James Liebman at Columbia University launched a counter-investigation with the help of his students and a private investigator. They discover that Carlos Hernandez did exist. Died in prison in 1999, while serving a sentence for assaulting a woman with a knife, this man looked like two drops of water like Carlos de Luna.
In 2012, Professor Liebman and his students published a long article titled “The Two Carlos: Anatomy of a Miscarriage of Justice”, which serves as the basis for the film. Patrick Forbes, however, claims to have started his research without a clear opinion. “If my film was a campaign clip against the death penalty, it would be bad,” he says.
Methodically, he looked for all the protagonists of the case and put on the screen police officers, prosecutors, lawyers, witnesses … But also women who were victims of Carlos Hernandez and who remain traumatized by the violence he inflicted on them. . One of them said that he bragged to her that he had killed Wanda Lopez and escaped justice thanks to his “tocayo”, a Spanish word for a person with the same first name. .
“All errors”
Today, Patrick Forbes thinks he has the truth: “It is horrible, but it is also very human: people make mistakes” and, according to him in this file, “all the mistakes that could be made have been made”. But according to him, they are part of a legal system which does not give equal opportunities to the poor and to minorities. “The culprit is a poor Hispanic man, the executed innocent is a poor Hispanic man, they couldn’t be treated fairly. “
So he hopes that his film will help rehabilitate Carlos de Luna, but also “bring about changes” larger. To do this, he accepted that “The Phantom” be put at the service of a petition calling on Democratic President Joe Biden to commute the sentences of those sentenced to death by federal justice.
The Democrat has said during the campaign that he is opposed to the death penalty but has taken no decision since taking office. On the contrary, his Minister of Justice recently called for the death penalty for the perpetrator of the Boston Marathon bombing. Patrick Forbes hopes that Carlos de Luna’s case “pushes him to change”. “Wouldn’t it be great if a film made a real difference? “
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