whether it was i don t believe it it is all [ bleep ]. i was ready for just about anything. when i was contacted by lise olsen, whom i did not know, i had no idea that there had ever been a question about the result in the cantu case or that anybody was looking at it for that matter. i met with him in his office in a quiet room. we spent an hour. i took him through it step by step slowly. i showed him the fact that juan moreno had said that he had never believed that ruben cantu was the shooter. that he felt that he had to identify cantu because that s who police wanted him to identify. lise had also uncovered information about officers bill ewell and joe dilaluz, who both had a vested interest in fingering ruben cantu as the killer. both bill you ll and joe delaluz had a history of
history exonerated. it was something that was going to be historic. it was going to be a story that was going to have reverberations. in 2005, after months of investigation, lise was ready to publish her articles about ruben cantu s innocence. but first, she had to confront former district attorney sam millsap. juan moreno retracting his testimony just destroyed the case. this was game-changing. and the person who could have changed this game was sam millsap, the elected direct attorney, the person who decides whether we seek the death penalty in a capital murder case. so i drove to san antonio. lise was about to publicly challenge one of the biggest decisions of sam millsap s career. i have no way of anticipating his reaction, whether it was outrage, whether it was anger,
there is not anything, i think, that could possibly be more difficult for a responsible prosecutor than the realization that he may be responsible for the execution of an innocent person. i was always very proud of the fact that i was the district attorney when i was 35 years old. but the thing that i realized was that there was value to experience. i didn t know enough to realize that you shouldn t place the kind of weight that we placed on the testimony of a single eyewitness. that is just haunting. on the eve of november 20th, 2005, lise olsen was putting the finishing touches on her story which was set to run on the
that it was him. i knew in my heart it wasn t him. but i was pressured and pressured all the time. so i used the name ruben cantu. in addition to not speaking english, juan moreno was an illegal immigrant. the fact is that he was in the country illegally. he was apparently concerned as anyone would be about deportation. so to claim at he felt pressure is entirely credible. richard now felt certain that san antonio police had pressured juan moreno into fingering the wrong man. but after seeing how the texas courts had handled ruben s case, richard turned to investigative reporter, lise olsen, for help. lise reported on crime and corruption at the houston chronicle. i got a tip that a private detective, who i later learned was richard reyna, had interviewed this eyewitness and
i was going to the library to do my homework. it was a little bit of a walk to get to the bus stop. i had to wait in line to use the computer. took a lot of juggling to keep it all together. what s possible when you have high-speed internet at home? the library never closes. it makes it so much better to do homework when you re at home. internet essentials from comcast. helping to bridge the digital divide. lise olsen s reporting about texas possibly executing an innocent man in ruben cantu sent