Wikipedia tells us that: "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."[2]"
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Millsap discussed his transformation in a Houston-Chronical interview, conducted by reporter Kim Cobb, ran under the heading: "Former Bexar DA crusades against the death penalty: Millsap has become an unlikely voice against executions."
"Sam Millsap Jr. knows that most people in his home state disagree with his fervent opposition to the death penalty, but the former Bexar County district attorney remains puzzled by a particular expression of sympathy he gets from many of his fellow Texans," the interview began;
"They frequently admonish him not to beat himself up over the execution of Ruben Cantu, a potentially innocent man Millsap helped send to the death chamber," it continued;
"Millsap says his well-wishers almost always offer the same advice: "Whether he was in fact guilty of the crime for which he was executed is immaterial -- he was a worthless human being who is better off dead."
Those words always stop him in his tracks, convincing him that he has a lot of work to do in his own backyard. Millsap has trouble getting an audience for his views in Texas, where polls consistently suggest a majority supports the death penalty. But when a New Jersey commission earlier this month backed the abolition of the death penalty, it was partly based on Millsap's testimony. "I remember him well," recalled the commission's chairman, the Rev. M. William Howard Jr. "Whenever a prosecutor is able to tell that kind of story, people stand up and take notice." Millsap travels to Paris in early February to speak to the Third World Congress Against the Death Penalty to explain his evolution from a full-throated execution advocate to a death penalty abolitionist. He knows that his pedigree as a Texas prosecutor is part of the draw. "When I go to these conferences," he said, "people kind of stare at me like I'm the two-headed donkey in the freak show because I come from this place where people love to execute criminals."
He's 55 now, but Millsap was young and brash when he took over as Bexar County district attorney in 1983. He left office in 1987, he said, confident that all who were sentenced to die on his watch was guilty of the crime for which he was convicted. But the next 13 years whittled away at that confidence. DNA evidence was routinely setting the convicted free, he said, and a groundbreaking Columbia University study of capital murder cases that had been overturned on appeal revealed rampant errors in defense and misconduct by prosecutors and police. When Illinois Gov. George Ryan declared a moratorium on executions in his state, based on evidence that 13 Illinois death row inmates might have been wrongfully convicted, it was a showstopper.
New complications
Millsap, now in private practice, issued a statement in 2000 revealing that the man who had once been so bullish on the death penalty now had grave doubts about the system. "I made my statement. I went back to living my life," the former San Antonio prosecutor said. "And in December 2005, (reporter) Lise Olsen and the Houston Chronicle complicated my life immeasurably by satisfying me that a prosecution and execution that I was responsible for may well have ... produced the execution of an innocent man." Ruben Cantu, a gang member convicted of a robbery-related murder when he was 18, was executed on Aug. 24, 1993. In 2005, a Chronicle investigation suggested that Cantu was possibly innocent. A co-defendant signed a sworn affidavit saying Cantu was not with him the night of the killing. The sole eyewitness to the crime has since recanted his identification of Cantu, saying he felt pressured by police to name him as the killer. And there was no physical evidence connecting Cantu to the crime. "What I realize now with maturity I didn't have at 35, or however the hell old I was, I realize that eyewitness testimony is not as reliable as I thought it was at that point in my life," Millsap said. "We'll never know whether Cantu was innocent or not."
Playing a constructive role;
When someone raises serious questions about something that happens on a former prosecutor's watch, Millsap said, that prosecutor has a duty to deal with it. And he's willing to travel just about anywhere to talk about the stakes involved when the judicial system fails to protect the innocent. "The corresponding regret that I have and feel so deeply," he said, "is that prosecutors of the other Texas cases at the center of this debate are silent or refuse to acknowledge the possibility of mistakes." Robert Kepple, executive director of the Texas District and County Attorneys Association, agrees that enforcement of the death penalty is not a particularly troubling issue for most state prosecutors. "If you ask prosecutors if they feel comfortable about asking for the assessment of death, they're going to say yes," Kepple said. "Of the vast majority of eligible cases, the vast majority (of prosecutors) seek something other than death." While nine men sit on death row in New Jersey, the state has not executed anyone in 43 years. The state Legislature is expected to accept the commission's recommendation to abolish the death penalty. "It was encouraging for me to have the opportunity to play a constructive role in a state that is looking hard at whether the death penalty is something that they want to be part of their legal fabric," Millsap said. "I love the state of Texas and wouldn't live anywhere else," he said. "I just think, on this particular issue, we're dreadfully wrong.""
Harold Levy...hlevy15@gmail.com;
