Hector De Peña was the first lawyer assigned to defend Carlos ...

2012] Los Tocayos Carlos, Part III, Chapter 11 939
“I believe [Carlos] was truthfully afraid of this individual,” De
Peña explained to the investigators years later. “He felt this
individual had [the] ability to see that he was silenced” if he ever
talked or revealed a name.
No matter how hard De Peña pleaded, Carlos wouldn’t give
up a name.
* * * * *
De Peña came away convinced, but stumped. After “working
with this young man for the period of time that [I] did,” De Peña said,
“I didn’t feel he was capable of killing someone.” “I honestly believe to
this day that Carlos didn’t do it” and that “his friend killed her.”
But De Peña was in a bind after only a week of work. If his
client had said, “I’m innocent, and here’s what I was doing at the
time,” De Peña could’ve tried to prove it. And if he couldn’t prove it,
he could come back to his client to say his story didn’t check out and
he’d be a fool to try to snow a jury with it.
If his client had not denied any involvement, De Peña could
have searched for a legal excuse to lessen the crime or “mitigating
factors” to justify a lower sentence. More likely, he would’ve worked
out a deal for Carlos to plead guilty in return for a life sentence.
In fact, prosecutor Schiwetz came to De Peña before trial—
and again during the trial—with an offer to withdraw the request for
a death sentence if Carlos would plead guilty. “[T]hroughout this
thing,” De Peña said, Steve Schiwetz “tried real hard to get my client
to accept a life sentence rather than the possibility of the death
penalty.” De Peña thought that twenty-year-old DeLuna’s tender age
weighed on the prosecutor.
But Carlos refused a deal. He was adamant that he was not
involved in the girl’s killing, De Peña explained. He was adamant
that he was not guilty, and he wanted his day in court.
Carlos’s “mindset,” the lawyer recalled, was that because he
was innocent, the prosecutors wouldn’t be able to come up with
evidence of his guilt. “They wouldn’t find him guilty” because “there
wouldn’t be enough facts.”
* * * * *
DeLuna’s simple way of thinking was another part of
DePeña’s problem.
“From a standard education perspective, you might say
[Carlos] was retarded,” De Peña believed. The young man could
survive well enough on the streets, but he was “from [a] clinical point
of view, maybe retarded.”