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

2012] Los Tocayos Carlos, Part III, Chapter 11 941
The two lawyers didn’t coordinate their work very well. Years
later, De Peña said he was “aghast” at the all-important final
argument Lawrence made at the very end of the case. De Peña felt it
insulted the jurors. During the argument, De Peña remembered
exchanging glances with a lawyer friend of his who was sitting with
De Peña’s wife in the courtroom. His friend made a gesture like
hammering a nail; he, too, thought Lawrence was putting the last
nail in DeLuna’s coffin. “But I couldn’t control that part of it,” De
Peña said, explaining why he let it pass. “I didn’t know just how
[Lawrence] was going to present his final argument.”
* * * * *
There were complaints, as well, about how De Peña delivered
his own argument to the jury. He was so anxious about making his
first ever “closing statement” to a jury in a big case that he couldn’t
keep his voice up. The court reporter, whose job it was to take down
everything the lawyers and witnesses said, couldn’t hear DePeña.
Neither, it seemed, could the jurors.
Later, the court reporter joked that the only thing she heard
De Peña say clearly during the entire trial was “Oh shit!” That was
De Peña’s reaction from his seat when the prosecutor brought out
some damaging information the defense lawyers hadn’t known about,
because they’d had failed to interview several people on the witness
list the prosecutor had given them before trial. The inexperienced
lawyer took the court reporter seriously when she twitted him about
having to include his profane remark in the official transcript of the
case.
* * * * *
Unlike De Peña, James Lawrence was an experienced
criminal defense lawyer, one who prided himself on how many
criminal cases he could handle in a year. His cases came mostly on
assignment from the courts to represent people who couldn’t pay, like
DeLuna.
There were some in Corpus who didn’t think much of
Lawrence as a defense lawyer. Detective Eddie Garza said Lawrence
would meet his clients for only a “few minutes,” get them to plea
bargain, and “collect his fee.” Others thought his experience counted
for a lot, rating him honest and “excellent.”
When the out-of-town investigators first asked Lawrence
about DeLuna, he said he didn’t remember the capital-murder case at
all. It was lost in the shuffle of the hundreds he’d handled that year.