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

942 COLUMBIA HUMAN RIGHTS LAW REVIEW [43.3:711
He showed the investigator a log book listing all of his cases. There
indeed were hundreds each year.
Steven Schiwetz, one of the prosecutors on the case, was able
to refresh Lawrence’s memory. Schiwetz approached Lawrence
because he was “hot under the collar” that investigators were looking
into the case so many years later.
Even after talking to Schiwetz, however, Lawrence said he
couldn’t remember much. The police found his client hiding under a
truck, he recalled, which didn’t look good. DeLuna told him “he ran
because he was on parole. He saw what was going on [inside the
Sigmor station] and then heard sirens [and ran] away.”
Lawrence also brought up “the money thing”: that
convenience store clerks don’t keep nearly as much money in the cash
drawer as DeLuna had on him.
Lawrence especially remembered that the police had no
physical evidence linking DeLuna to the crime, which was odd given
all the blood at the scene. The lawyer also recalled that the witness
who saw the killer coming out of the store gave a description of
another person, not DeLuna. “Hell, if that isn’t reasonable doubt I
don’t know what is,” he said.
* * * * *
After Lawrence was assigned the case in April, De Peña
breathed a sigh of relief and went on with the rest of his struggling
practice. At a hearing on June 10 at which the judge considered
DeLuna’s request for a postponement of the trial because his lawyers
weren’t ready, the judge asked De Peña why he hadn’t worked on
Carlos’s case or met with his client since early March. De Peña
admitted knowing “there was leg work that needed to be done” on the
case but said he hadn’t done it “because of trying to maintain my own
practice and my own cases.” No one asked De Peña why his
appointment to represent DeLuna on capital murder charges didn’t
count as one of the lawyer’s “own” cases.
Lawrence had also been busy with other matters. Late April
and much of May had gone to another murder case the local court had
assigned to him. Lawrence did file a written request, repeating De
Peña’s earlier one, to view the police evidence on DeLuna, and he did
take a look at the evidence. But he had no time for his own
investigation into what happened.
It wasn’t until early June that Lawrence finally could focus on
DeLuna’s case. He filed several motions, including one to have the
judge throw out the Arsuagas’ identification of DeLuna after being