Ruben Cantu - Recent Developments

Recent Developments

Sam Millsap, who was the District Attorney presiding over the Cantu case, proclaimed himself a "lifelong supporter of the death penalty" in his commentary published in the San Antonio Express-News in the year 2000. In a December 2005 interview with the Express-News, Millsap expressed a newfound opposition to capital punishment. In that 2005 story, Millsap, an attorney in private practice at the time of the interview, says his decision to oppose the death penalty was affirmed, as evidence surfaced that Ruben Cantu was very likely innocent, when prosecuted by Millsap's office, and ultimately executed by the state of Texas. According to the 2005 Express-News story, "'It is troubling to me personally. No decision is more frightening than seeking the death penalty. We owe ourselves certainty on it.' He had that degree of certainty in the 1980s when he was the district attorney, 'when I was in my 30s and knew everything.' Now, he says, 'There is no way to have that kind of certainty.'" He went on to say that if Cantu was innocent, that means the person who committed the murder remains free and that "the misconduct by police officers could be addressed today."

Bexar County (San Antonio) District Attorney, Susan Reed, indicated to Rick Casey of the Houston Chronicle that she may bring a murder by perjury charge against Moreno, the surviving victim of the robbery-shooting and key prosecution witness. Juan Moreno is currently a building contractor living in east San Antonio with a teenage child of his own.

In 2006 Reed said that she was "deeply skeptical" of someone who recants testimony they gave twenty years previously but agreed that Cantu should not have been prosecuted as a death penalty case.

In 2007 Reed issued a report finding that Ruben Cantu was guilty of the crime for which Texas executed him in 1993, however critics say the report is compromised by the fact Reed was the judge who rejected Cantu's appeal in 1988 and set his execution date in 1993. Reed assigned to the Cantu case two investigators, Mike Beers and James Moore, who were allegedly recorded ridiculing the case in a phone conversation and openly mocking the notion that Cantu might have been innocent.