Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Summary and Analysis of The Wrong Carlos: Anatomy of a Wrongful Execution: Based on the Book by James S. Liebman
    Summary and Analysis of The Wrong Carlos: Anatomy of a Wrongful Execution: Based on the Book by James S. Liebman
    Summary and Analysis of The Wrong Carlos: Anatomy of a Wrongful Execution: Based on the Book by James S. Liebman
    Ebook57 pages22 minutes

    Summary and Analysis of The Wrong Carlos: Anatomy of a Wrongful Execution: Based on the Book by James S. Liebman

    By Worth Books

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    So much to read, so little time? This brief overview of The Wrong Carlos: Anatomy of a Wrongful Execution tells you what you need to know—before or after you read James S. Liebman and the Columbia DeLuna Project’s book.
     
    Crafted and edited with care, Worth Books set the standard for quality and give you the tools you need to be a well-informed reader. 
     
    This short summary and analysis of The Wrong Carlos: Anatomy of a Wrongful Execution by James S. Liebman and the Columbia DeLuna Project includes:
     
    • Historical context
    • Chapter-by-chapter summaries
    • Detailed timeline of important events
    • Important quotes
    • Fascinating trivia
    • Glossary of terms
     
    About James S. Liebman and the Columbia DeLuna Project’s The Wrong Carlos: Anatomy of a Wrongful Execution:
     
    The Wrong Carlos calls into question the United States justice system and its ability to impose the death penalty with impartiality and certainty through an in-depth examination of an obscure capital murder case from the 1980s.
     
    In Corpus Christi, Texas, a man named Carlos DeLuna was executed for the murder of Wanda Vargas Lopez, while a man who looked just like him, Carlos Hernandez, escaped conviction for killing her and others.
     
    Columbia Law School professor James S. Liebman and his team from the Columbia DeLuna Project delve into this case of mistaken identity to study how factors such as race, poverty, and reliance upon eyewitness testimony can contribute to erroneous death penalty convictions.
     
    In a country where capital punishment remains controversial, The Wrong Carlos asks its readers to consider whether irreversible conviction at the hands of a flawed system is the type of justice Americans want to see served.
     
    The summary and analysis in this ebook are intended to complement your reading experience and bring you closer to a great work of nonfiction.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateFeb 7, 2017
    ISBN9781504044110
    Summary and Analysis of The Wrong Carlos: Anatomy of a Wrongful Execution: Based on the Book by James S. Liebman
    Author

    Worth Books

    Worth Books’ smart summaries get straight to the point and provide essential tools to help you be an informed reader in a busy world, whether you’re browsing for new discoveries, managing your to-read list for work or school, or simply deepening your knowledge. Available for fiction and nonfiction titles, these are the book summaries that are worth your time.  

    Read more from Worth Books

    Related to Summary and Analysis of The Wrong Carlos

    Related ebooks

    Book Notes For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      It's An Easy Crime To Get Away With, But Prosecutors Are Trying To Change That

      Jan 16, 2018

      The sexual assault of a person with an intellectual disability is the one of the most difficult crimes to prosecute, but some prosecutors are tackling the tricky cases.

      10 min read

    • Article

      Murdered By A Monster On Christmas Eve

      Dec 14, 2020

      It should have been a magical time for the Petersons. It was Christmas 2002 and school teacher Laci Peterson only had a month to go before giving birth to her first child. Laci and her husband, Scott, had the holiday season to prepare for their littl

      3 min read

    • Article

      The New Netflix Series 'Mindhunter' Looks at an Elite FBI Profiling Unit During the 1970s

      Oct 12, 2017

      NEW YORK - To meet Jonathan Groff and Holt McCallany, stars of the Netflix series "Mindhunter," you'd never suspect they recently spent 10 long months consumed with the darkest reaches of the human psyche. Groff, a charmer known for playing the lead

      4 min read

    • Article

      Inside The Life Of A Killer

      Jan 22, 2021

      Inside The Life Of A Killer
      4 min read

    • Article

      Police Say One Man Is Tied To Multiple Killings In Missouri And Kansas

      Nov 9, 2021

      Perez Reed is facing charges of murder and assault in shootings that occurred in the St. Louis County area. The gun used in those attacks has been tied to other killings in St. Louis and Kansas.

      2 min read

    • Article

      The Undocumented Agent

      Feb 14, 2020

      The Undocumented Agent
      14 min read

    • Article

      The Monsters Walking Free

      Apr 4, 2021

      The infamous Easey Street murders remain as much of a mystery today as when they occurred more than 40 years ago. In January 1977, neighbours had noticed something amiss at the home of Suzanne Armstrong, 28, and Susan Bartlett, 27. They’d heard whi

      5 min read

    • Article

      Twisted Triangle

      Apr 16, 2020

      Twisted Triangle
      4 min read

    • Article

      Texas Prosecutor Drops All Charges In 2015 Biker Shootout That Killed 9

      Apr 3, 2019

      The McLennan County district attorney said he aims to "end this nightmare that we have been dealing with in this county." Prosecutors were not able to win any convictions after indicting 155 bikers.

      3 min read

    • Article

      What We Know (And Don't Know) About 'Missing White Women Syndrome'

      Apr 13, 2017

      Social media outcry over a spate of missing persons cases involving black and Latina girls raised old concerns about whether such cases involving white women are more likely to receive news coverage.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Jailed For A Murder I Didn’t Commit

      Jul 9, 2020

      Kirk Bloodsworth was asleep at his cousin’s house when the police arrived. A torch was shone in his face and then the questions began. Nobody believed his answers, though. There was a little girl dead and he was the main suspect. Two weeks before, in

      3 min read

    • Article

      Robert Fuller's Death Brings Enormous Public Scrutiny On A Brief Life Of Struggle

      Jul 12, 2020

      LOS ANGELES - Since the early morning hours of June 10, when a passerby found the body of a young Black man hanging from a tree near Palmdale City Hall, the brief life of Robert Fuller has come under a microscope. Local authorities deemed his death a

      5 min read

    • Article

      Mexico Wouldn't Solve His Father's Murder, So He Had To Do It Himself

      Jan 2, 2020

      TEPOZTLAN, Mexico - Juan Carlos Quiroz was working late in Mexico City on March 16, 2017, when his older sister called with distressing news. That afternoon, in the family's hometown a few hours away, their 71-year-old father had gone missing. A reti

      10 min read

    • Article

      Free To Kill

      Oct 7, 2021

      The killer who taunted the world On the evening of December 20, 1968, David Faraday, 17, and Betty Lou Jensen, 16, drove out to a remote spot on Lake Herman Road in Vallejo, California. The pair were found dead with multiple fatal bullet wounds in th

      6 min read

    • Article

      Name That KILLER

      May 7, 2020

      When sex workers in Dallas, Texas, started showing up dead with their eyeballs missing, terror spread through the city. Many people are fascinated by eyes, but none as much as the Eyeball Killer. Charles Frederick Albright was born in Texas in 1933.

      5 min read

    • Article

      Murder Charges Filed In Drug Deaths Of Two Women Left At Hospitals

      Jul 1, 2022

      A man accused of leaving two unconscious women at hospitals, where they were later pronounced dead from drug overdoses, has been charged with their murders, court records show. Christy Giles, 24, was brought on Nov. 13 to a hospital in Culver City, d

      4 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Summary and Analysis of The Wrong Carlos

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Summary and Analysis of The Wrong Carlos - Worth Books

      Contents

      Context

      Overview

      Summary

      Timeline

      Cast of Characters

      Direct Quotes and Analysis

      Trivia

      What’s That Word?

      Critical Response

      About James S. Liebman

      About the Columbia DeLuna Project

      For Your Information

      Bibliography

      Copyright

      Context

      The Wrong Carlos, published in 2014, calls into question the efficacy of the US justice system and its ability to impose the death penalty with accuracy and certainty. James S. Liebman and his coauthors from the Columbia DeLuna Project (CDP) examine these questions through the lens of a relatively obscure 1980s case from Corpus Christi, Texas, in which a man named Carlos DeLuna was executed for the murder of Wanda Vargas Lopez. Liebman happened upon the case while researching unreliable eyewitness testimony in capital cases, but it had a further twist: DeLuna maintained his innocence from his arrest until his execution, and insisted that a man named Carlos Hernandez was the true culprit.

      His story sounded unlikely, but in 2004 Liebman and the CDP began six years of investigation that led to The Wrong Carlos and its ultimate conclusion: The state of Texas executed Carlos DeLuna for Carlos Hernandez’s crime in December 1989. Their painstaking examination of old and new evidence has convinced the Lopez family, governing officials, and countless others that DeLuna was the victim of a wrongful execution. In a country where support for the death penalty remains controversial, The Wrong Carlos asks its readers to seriously consider whether irreversible conviction at the hands of a flawed system is the type of justice Americans want to see served.

      Overview

      On February 4, 1983, a young woman named Wanda Vargas Lopez was stabbed while she worked alone as a gas station clerk in Corpus Christi, Texas. Within an hour, a twenty-year-old Hispanic man named Carlos DeLuna was pulled from under a truck a few blocks away and arrested for her murder. Five months later, DeLuna was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death on the strength of one witness’s testimony.

      DeLuna could have avoided the death penalty if he had accepted a plea deal, but he staunchly maintained his innocence, accusing a different man, Carlos Hernandez, another Hispanic man from Corpus Christi. No one gave serious weight to this claim until 2004, when James S. Liebman singled out the case as a candidate to exemplify errors in eyewitness identification. Investigator Peso Chavez spent a day in Corpus Christi to see if he could learn anything about the case. Linda Perales was the first person who agreed to talk to him—she had at one time or another married into both the Hernandez family and the DeLuna family. Perales verified Carlos Hernandez’s existence and directed Chavez to his niece, Pricilla Hernandez, who described overhearing a confession from Uncle Carlos. She also remembered Hernandez’s birthdate, which allowed investigators to

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1