5 -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com on this episode of "death row stories," a brutal murder in texas. >> he went crazy. he started shooting all over the place. >> lands a 17-year-old offender on death row. >> young people were committing very adult crimes. >> but with questionable evidence. >> there are no guns, no blood. dna, nothing. >> and a death sentence looming. >> execution wassed a midnight in those days. >> a d.a. has doubts. >> i was horrified by what i saw. >> a boy's life hangs in the balance. >> evil people are never going to change. they should be executed. there is a body in the water. he was butchered and murdered. >> many people proclaim their innocence. >> in this case, there are a

number of things that stink. this man is remorseless. >> he needs to pay for it with his life. >> the electric chair flashed in front of my eyes. >> get a conviction at all costs. let the truth fall where it may. ♪ on the south side of san antonio, texas, late on a fall evening in 1984, a murder was about to take place. >> the neighborhood was very tough. there's street gauge -- gangs all over the place. people talk about mexican mafia. >> in a small half-built house slept two construction workers, 19-year-old juan moreno and 25-year-old pedro gomez. >> they were spending the night

there because, i believe, the owner of the house had a water heater stolen. so he had asked them to stay there to protect his property as he built this house. >> but juan and pedro were about to have unexpected company. >> what happened that particular night, these two decided to go into the house. one of them sneaked in through a window, open the back door for the other guy. the other guy had a rifle. >> the robbers turned on a light and discovered juan and pedro sleeping on the floor. >> juan moreno was hit on the head with the rifle. the other guy wakes up. he had a gun underneath the pillow. he reaches for it. >> when pedro gomez reached under there, that's when day say they unloaded on the two of them. >> the guy with the rifle, he just panicked and just started shooting. >> juan and pedro were each shot nine times. the robbers took their wallets

and watches and fled, leaving their victims for dead. >> i think the number of shots fired was pretty intensive. normally, you shoot them once or twice or whatever and get out of there. they were shot several times. so it was pretty vicious crime. >> pedro gomez was shot in the head and died instantly. but juan moreno, despite his wounds, managed to crawl to his pickup truck and call for help. eventually, taken to the hospital, juan, lost a lung, a kidney and part of his stomach. >> he was near death after the shooting. i think it's almost a miracle that he survived. it's because of his age. he was young and strong. >> juan still struggling to survive told police his attackers had been two hispanic teenagers. that description matched thousands of young men in the area.

san antonio police canvassed the south side neighborhood. but in an area dominated by a ruthless street gang with a strict code of silence, the trail ran cold. but three weeks after the murder, rumors started swirling at a local high school that two teenagers, david garza, age 15, and ruben cantu, age 17, had committed the crime. ruben had even bragged about being the shooter. >> people didn't know whether ruben, himself was part of the gang. his older brothers were in gangs. there were low-level pool halls, drug dealing in the streets, a car theft ring active in the same neighborhood. it was a tough place to grow up. >> four months after the shooting, juan moreno, still recovering from his wounds, was shown a police photo lineup with

ruben cantu's picture. >> moreno identified ruben cantu as the assailant. he was charged with murder. the case was taken and accepted by the district attorney's office. >> district attorney, sam millsap, the youngest big city d.a. in the country would now decide whether to try 17-year-old ruben cantu as an adult, making him eligible for the death penalty. >> we had very, very young people committing very adult crimes, very brutal crimes. and i was moved by that. the only thing that prosecutor could do in that situation because of the brutality of the crime is to prosecute it as couple murder. and i had a perfect record in death penalty cases. >> ruben cantu's trial began on july 22nd, 1985.

in court, the prosecution's star witness, juan moreno described how he shot pedro in the head and turned the rifle on him and riddled his body with bullets. >> mr. moreno was a good witness, very sympathetic. he was asked to raise his shirt and show the scars and the wounds that he had received. when the jury saw the scars, they made a pretty big impression. they asked, are you able to identify in court today the man who shot and killed your friend. and he was able to say, yes, i see him. he's sitting right there and pointed to mr. cantu. >> the jury decided very quickly, they decided in just an hour and a half, they ruled that cantu should die by lethal

injection. cantu's family is stunned. >> a supporter of cantu tried to block the camera after they returned with the decision he should be executed. >> district attorney agreed with the verdict. ruben cantu arguably received a perfect trial. i say that because he had a fair judge. he had a very fine defense lawyer. he had an ethical prosecutor. the jury made the only decision that they could make under the circumstances. >> reuben's accomplice, a man named david garza, received 20 years. cantu was sent to solitary confinement at the huntsville state penitentiary, 230 miles east of san antonio. from his cell, reuben wrote a letter addressed to the citizens of san antonio. >> this was a letter he wrote not long after he was convicted. it says, my name is reuben m. cantu. i am only 18 years old. i have been framed in a capital murder case. so i'm going to have to spend the rest of my life in prison or die by so-called lethal injection.

it's an angry letter. he's outraged about what happened to him. but it's got some very, very powerful charges in it. >> for sam millsap, the letter was just another convict claiming innocence. as the years went by, millsap began to have doubts. >> it never occurred to me when i was 35 years old that i was the smartest guy in the room, that the criminal justice system could get it wrong in these cases. if i could do it over again, i never would have made the decision to prosecute ruben cantu for capital murder. if you haven't heard about the latest sale at hotels.com by now, it's because you're willfully ignoring me.

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in 1985, sam millsap successfully sent juvenile offender, ruben cantu to death row for the murder of pedro gomez. >> it was not a difficult decision in 1985 to prosecute the case as a capital murder case. we had a survivor of a brutal crime who was able to identify cantu. but there are things that i know and understand today that i didn't understand at that point. >> ruben came from south san antonio in what was a very tough neighborhood.

his parents split when he was a young kid and his mother left and he stayed with his father. >> he was a pretty good older brother to me. he would look after me and everything was fine up until this happened. a cousin of mine called an said he had been on the news, that he had been arrested for murder. i was just, like, devastated, in disbelief. >> on death row, ruben wrote a letter claiming he had been framed by police. that got the attention of the naacp, who hired richard reyna to investigate. as a former cop, reyna had heard claims of innocence before. >> naturally, not all the time are you going to run into people that are innocent. what got my curiosity on this case is that they didn't really have any evidence connecting ruben to that house, no fingerprints, no physical evidence, none whatsoever. >> richard also discovered that police had only focused their attention on ruben after he was

involved in an unrelated crime. >> i saw where ruben had been involved with a police officer in a shootout at some bar, not pertaining to this murder. >> i think ruben was arrested because of something that happened after that murder. he and a couple of his friends were at a bar shooting pool. and they had a conflict with an off-duty officer. he accidentally hit him with the pool stick. words were exchanged. >> the off-duty officer was joe dilaluz, a 16-year veteran of the force. >> the officer showed him his weapons. he was in regular civilian clothes, so they didn't know. my brother, ruben felt threatened. he shot the officer not knowing he was an off-duty officer.

>> officer delaluz who was shot four times would survive. but after ruben was arrested, police realized they had a problem. is. >> if fact of the matter is, ruben was never prosecuted in that bar fight where he shot a police officer. there was no case that could be made against ruben, which implies that joe delaluz drew his gun on ruben before ruben fired. otherwise, why wouldn't they have prosecuted ruben cantu for attempting to kill a police officer? >> rather than letting ruben go, sergeant bill yule, who supervised homicides for the san antonio p.d., had another idea. the gomez murder had gone unsolved for four months. >> bill yule was a friend of joe delaluz, the officer shot and he also ended up being the person who was in charge of this murder investigation. so after the shooting of bill

yule's friend, bill yule decides to take another look at ruben cantu. >> by now, juan moreno had twice failed to identify ruben cantu as the shooter. with ruben in custody, yule sent a detective to juan's home. >> i took the photos, the forms and a portable typewriter. i showed juan this array. he sat there and looked at them and looked at them and looked at them and he shoved them aside and looked away from them. he said, look i know who did it. i know who shot me. so why do i have to identify anyone out of this photo array. >> i said, well, who did it? he said, ruben cantu. we went around and around. i could tell the guy was very scared. he didn't want to sign anything. i think that he was afraid of

retaliation. he just would not do it. so i folded up my typewriter and bid farewell. >> it didn't make any sense to me that juan moreno supposedly saw ruben cantu face to face, inches apart when he was shot, they showed him at least five or more photo line-ups with ruben cantu in these line-ups. he still couldn't identify him. why is he not being identified? >> still unsatisfied, police brought juan moreno to the station and told him ruben had just shot a police officer. this time, moreno finally picked ruben out of a lineup. >> now, they come back and say, he identified ruben cantu as the shooter. and that was it. and i said, no, that doesn't work. you can see quickly that there is a pattern there. it doesn't work. >> richard needed to speak with juan himself. after weeks of effort, he

finally tracked down juan and convinced him to do a videotaped interview. [ speaking in spanish ] >> richard also asked juan about his statement fingering cantu, which was written in english. [ speaking in spanish ] >> juan kept telling me the police kept showing up and they kept showing me photo lineups and i said, it wasn't him. he is not in here. they said, yes, he was. they kept telling me they knew

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

that he had recanted. i was very skeptical. because there are a lot of people on death row that have innocence claims and a lot of times they are fabricated claims. it is very unusual for a case to rest on such limited evidence but with someone in texas sentenced to death based on the wrong information. >> lise would begin investigating ruben's story, and in the process, come face to face with the man who sent ruben to death row, sam millsap. ♪

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together, we're building a better california. by 1993, ruben cantu had spent eight years in solitary confinement while his appeals unfolded. >> i just wanted him to get out. you you know, i could go over there and i was scared. it was jail, prison. i have never been locked up. it was just scary, terrifying. i was only 20 something. i was like, man, when he gets out, we are going to go do this. we are going to go do that. >> ruben's appellate lawyer was determined to get ruben off death row. but in appeal after appeal, ruben's case was denied in both texas and federal courts.

>> do you feel like anyone is taking your issue seriously? absolutely not. i would get more review on a car theft case than i would on a capital murder case in texas. >> ruben's lawyer felt the case against him was weak because the only evidence was juan moreno's testimony. >> and that was it. there was no other evidence in the case. no circumstantial evidence, no firearm, no nothing. that was the entirety of the state's case on a 17-year-old boy. >> lack of evidence was not sufficient grounds to win an appeal. >> on appeal, guilt or innocence is never the issue. what our constitution promises every criminal defendant is a fair trial. because the trial was so clean, there was no basis, no error that had been committed during the course of the trial that would have justified a reversal. it was as clean as they come.

>> in a last ditch effort, ruben's lawyer requested a hearing in front of judge susan d. reed, a former prosecutor elected to the bench on a strong law and order platform. >> i have always believed that the death penalty is appropriate in certain cases. i was not in the district attorney's office when it was being tried. but i have no reason to believe it wasn't a fair trial. and i decided there was no cause to do an evidentiary hearing. everything you are saying the court has already dealt with on your appeal. after the appellate courts have ruled you have to give them a date. >> susan reed set an execution date for august 24th, 1993. ruben's last option was to appeal for clemency. but governors in texas had a notorious history with the death penalty. >> these hardened criminals will

never again murder, rain, or deal drugs. as governor, i made sure they received the ultimate punishment, death and texas is a safer place for it. >> your state has executed 234 death row inmates. have you struggled to sleep at night? >> no, sir, i have never struggled with that at all. >> texans are hard wired to support the death penalty. there may be a gene that is unique to people that are born and live in texas. we are programmed to believe that the death penalty is a necessary part of our criminal justice system. we love a good execution. >> since 1976, texas has executed well over 500 people, more than the next six states combined. >> since i've been governor, we have put 45 people to death. it is not something that anybody wants to deal with.

you but they won't commit another crime. >> the governor during ruben's clemency appeal was the colorful leader of the texas democrats, ann richard. >> poor george. he was born with a silver foot in his mouth. >> in texas, even liberal icon, ann richards, would not dispute the death penalty. on august 23rd, 1994, the day before he was to be executed, ruben cantu received the reply. clemency denied. >> a san antonio man continues to claim innocence just hours before he is set to die by lethal injection. >> on the day of his scheduled execution, local stations aired an interview with ruben where he again declared his innocence. >> by law standards, my case i barely legally sufficient to hold up a capital murder conviction because of the eyewitness. yet his testimony, just looking

at his testimony, you don't know where he is coming from. but at the death house at huntsville, where all texas executions take place, preparations for ruben's execution proceeded. >> the execution was at midnight in those days. >> reverend carroll picket was chaplain at the huntsville prison for 16 years. >> ruben had been visiting with his family most of that day. >> you have different rooms and in each room they have phones. so all of us be on the phone with ruben. he was in a single cell across from where he was sitting was the death chamber. he said that once that medicine ran through his veins and he shut his eyes, that that's when he was going to grab god's hand and god was going to take him. then, i hear noise in the background and i ask him. he says, they're setting up the equipment and we're still waiting for the lawyer to call,

hoping that it would stop. and then i guess around 11:45, they said that he had to leave, it was time to go. and he started praying. and he says, everything is going to be okay. i was still hoping for that lawyer, just waiting for that call.

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ruben cantu was scheduled to be executed after midnight on august 24th, 1993. as the hour approached, ruben said good-bye to his family. >> they told him it was time. he just said, i love y'all. everything is going to be fine. they took him down the hallway and he changed into a black outfit. i didn't hear from him anymore. >> he got down on the floor and he prayed. and he rose up and said, i'm not innocent of sin, but i'm not guilty of this crime. right at 12:00, i said, you crawl up on the gurney. he said, okay. we strapped him down. and he's got nine straps on him.

and i put my hand on his shoulder and said, okay, ruben, you ready? i said, is there anything i can do for you now? he said, no, everything is going to be okay. >> we were having a candlelight vigil across the street from where we're at. a lot of college students that are having a big old party, kill him, hang him, all this stuff. you are out there and you are looking at the clock and you can't do anything. you are just helpless, powerless. but i told him he put his head back and tried to get all the air out of your lungs, because it makes it go quicker. he had one small grunt and he didn't make a sound. he didn't move. he went ahead and went to heaven.

>> there was guards on the towers, guards all over the place. finally, the chaplain said that he had been killed, that he was dead. the lights came on, the cameras came on and it is like they just won a super bowl over there. and my mom and sister were bawling and crying. my aunts. cameras everywhere. my mom had sent ruben a necklace with a cross. the chaplain came back and he handed it to my mom. that was it. [ speaking in spanish ] >> she says he is now resting. he is not in jail. at least he is free now. >> ruben cantu was an innocent man. young man. there was no evidence to convict him, nothing much whatsoever.

but he's executed. >> richard reyna was not able to save ruben's life. because the naacp hadn't hired him to investigate the case until ten years after ruben's execution. >> as long as no one is held accountable, these things are going to continue. people are going to be falsely accused, sentenced to die or even executed. >> my brother was innocent. and i just want his name cured. when it all comes out, i want the state of texas to come out and make it public and apologize to our family. the district attorney said, all we want is money. it ain't about the money. all the money in the world is not going to bring my brother back. but at least i'll have comfort knowing he's been cleared. >> while this case wasn't brought to lise olsen until 11 years after ruben was killed, for her, the stakes were clear. >> there's never been an executed offender in modern

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,

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

disciplinary problems. bill ewell said to me that the reason that they took another look at ruben was this other shooting in the pool hall. >> a sense of dread came over sam millsap as he listened to lise's claims. >> in the middle of that, he sort of got this look on his face that was more than surprise. it was kind of anguish, i would say. >> when i looked at the file, i was horrified by what i saw. i don't think horrified is too strong of a word. i could not believe that i had made the decision to prosecute a capital murder based on the testimony of a single eyewitness. and i said to lise that i thought i had made a mistake. >> he said he thought he made a mistake. i thought, wow, that's just amazing. that's not what i expected at all. in fact, i expected him to be defensive of his decision to protect his own reputation. but he was just so floored because he had been at peace, i think, in his mind that he had made the right decision.

>> 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

front page of the next day's paper. >> amazingly, sam millsap was saying that he thought a mistake had been made. that was definitely going to be a huge story. >> but les -- lise's story was going to be more than an expose about ruben cantu's innocence. lise was about to point to who she felt the real killer was.

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on november 20th, 2005, lise olsen's story about the case for ruben cantu's innocence hit news stands in texas. >> the "san antonio express news" and the "houston chronicle" both ran those stories on their front page for two days in a row. juan moreno retract his testimony was lightning story. it went everywhere. it got picked up all over the country. as part of his story, lise spoke with the accomplice to the murder, david garza, about who the real killer was. >> david took a plea for armed robbery, a lessor offense and

was sentenced to 20 years. he said, ruben wasn't there that night. he said, there was someone else with me. >> i don't plan on saying the name of the person that was with me but i can assure you for a fact that it was not ruben cantu. the person that was with me is still out there. >> david garza confirmed to me that there was another boy who was about the same age as ruben who had curly hair, a little lighter hair than ruben's. >> a boy with curly hair had also been mentioned by juan moreno when he spoke with richard reyna. [ speaking in spanish ]

>> but if ruben cantu was innocent, why did david garza allow ruben to be executed? >> david told me, we had a code of silence. we didn't talk. we knew that talking to the police would only get us in more trouble. >> me and ruben, we would never snitch each other out for anybody else involved. that was our loyalty, no matter who was involved. >> another friend of david and ruben's did name names. romero reyes, who had curly hair, was brought in twice by police as a suspect in the murder before telling detectives that cantu had been the shooter. >> romero told the police that ruben confessed to him that he was the shooter but consider who is saying that ruben confessed to them? do you think that romero is going to say, yeah, i did it? that's never going to happen. so he fixed it up pretty good for himself.

he shoved everything over to ruben. it wasn't me. it was ruben. >> if romero did implicate ruben cantu for the murder, why was he never called to testify at the up cantu trial? a transcript from a pre-trial hearing reveals that before deposition, that police beat and handcuffed romero, threw him into a wall and threatened to charge him with the offense. >> romero was the guy we suspected did it. he had kinky hair. the police just turned him loose. >> susan reed, the judge that signed ruben's death warrant was now district attorney of san antonio. under pressure to respond to lise olsen's charges of misconduct, reed ordered an internal investigation. >> the way the case was being

put out into the public was that juan moreno supposedly, according to the articles, was pressured into identifying somebody who was innocent of a crime in court. the police were being attacked for the method that they were using, that the police were using in their photo lineup. so we did an investigation. >> one of the questions for susan reed early on was, is it appropriate for your office to be involved in this investigation because she definitely had a stake in the case. >> there was no way that given that history, she could possibly be objective. sort of like writing your own paper. >> they kept trying to knock me off this investigation. i think there were three different motions saying i shouldn't be conducting the investigation. it was kind of like i was under attack too. susan reed and her office had the power to fight back.

not only would lise olsen soon feel threatened but juan moreno would face possible prison time. your credit is in pretty good shape. chuck, i know i have a 798 fico score, thanks to experian.com. kaboom... get your credit swagger on. go to experian.com. become a member of experian credit tracker and take charge of your score. ♪

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shock waves through the state and district attorney, susan reed, responded by going on the offensive. >> susan reed, she went after lise first. she wanted to know her sources and lise called me and said, they are going to take me before the grand jury. if i don't disclose my information, i think they are going to jail me. so i said, lise, just feel free to give them my name. that's okay. we have nothing to hide. >> richard agreed to meet with reed's investigators and shared his materials from the case. >> what we discovered was that juan moreno was literally manipulated by the investigator, the investigator worked on his wife and he would send her flowers and he would phone call. he was taking them out to dinner. he was making payments to the family. it was an extremely manipulative investigation.

>> reed's report says that juan moreno changed his story because i paid him. it's absurd. this is a hard-working man. now, if juan moreno says, i'll spend a day with you, i need to reimburse him on whatever he loses. that's the standard thing to do. we have never had anyone ever, anyone ever, ever question that, except susan reed. >> juan moreno had absolutely nothing to gain by making a decision to go public with his story. the biggest newspaper in the state of texas is going to say that he had identified the wrong person in a capital murder case. which he felt bad about. >> as far as susan reed was concerned, if juan's story about ruben's innocence was true, she would take aggressive action. >> i have very strong feelings that someone who commits perjury that results in someone being executed needs to be held accountable. my primary concern when all of

this arose was, is there sufficient cause to indict juan moreno for murder by perjury. >> susan reed suggested they could get him murder by perjury. i have never seen anybody charged with that but juan moreno was intimidated badly. he was shaken, scared, their wife and his son was scared. i felt terrible, because i brought him out. i think she would have been better off if she hadn't talked about murder by perjury. i don't think everybody thought that was the smart thing to do. >> in the end, susan reed absolved the san antonio police department and juan moreno of any wrong going, saying they had helped convict a guilty man, ruben cantu. opponents called the investigation blatantly biased and petitioned for an independent attorney.

susan reed, the district attorney for san antonio for 16 years, declined the request. >> with the government denying any fault in the execution of ruben cantu, ruben's family cannot sue for damages. the cantus aren't the only ones who have struggled to move on. >> it certainly never occurred to me that we might have gotten it wrong in the cantu case but the one thing that is abundantly clear to me today is that if anybody got it wrong, it was me and the way i got it wrong is that i made a flawed decision and that's a mistake in judgment that i will live with for the rest of my life. >> as for susan reed, the events of the ruben cantu case haven't shaken her belief in the death penalty. >> i have seen evil.

i have tried cases of evil, evil people who are never going to change. therefore, they should be executed. >> the lord is my shepherd. i shall not want. he makes me to lie down in green pasteurs. he leads me beside the still waters. he restores -- >> ruben is five years older than me. as we were growing up, i would sleep next to him. i always had half my leg touching his leg, because i wouldn't sleep. i was scared. i had to touch him until i fell asleep. >> yea thou i walk through the valley of the shadow of death. >> later on, i had dreams of him coming out and he and i hanging out together. >> thou anointst my head with oil. my cup runeth over. surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and i will dwell in the life and i will dwell in the house of the lord forever.

-- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com on this episode of death row stories, a family is found brutally murdered. >> the severity of the crime puts it on another level. >> and an escaped convict is sentenced to death. >> they caught him, they should do away with him. >> but just hours before his execution, a new defense team raises doubts about his guilt. >> you let the evidence lead you to a suspect. what they did in this case was exactly the opposite. evidence destruction, evidence tampering. my client was framed. >> there's a body in the water. >> he was butchered and murdered.