THE STORY, ON HOW REG ENDED UP ON DEATH ROW
THE STORY, ON HOW REG ENDED UP ON DEATH ROW
Texas is on the verge of killing another innocent man. I was more than just wrongly convicted of killing my friend, Carlos Garza, for some jewellery. Here is shocking evidence-backed facts, not just a side of a story. Here is THE story.
My Brother Robert and his then girlfriend, Latoya, came to my apartment, unexpected, to spend the day cruising, visiting family and friends. Of the friends was Carlos Garza, who didn't answer his door, so we left to visit other friends. Before my brother took me home, I had made a last minute request for him to stop by a pawnshop we were approaching, so I could sell some of my jewellery that I had already been slowly selling to the pawnshop, I had been in the process of transitioning from a lifestyle of gangs, drugs and flamboyance, to a settled down family lifestyle. A few days later, my brother and his girlfriend were arguing at our Dad's trailer home, in a trailer park down the street from Carlos's apartment. The trailer park manager called the police. When a police officer arrived and grabbed Latoya she found herself charged with assault on a public servant and failure to I.D. When the police officer ran her name through the computer he found that she had also had outstanding warrants for her arrest.
Another officer arrived, placed latoya in his squad car, and drove her across the street from the trailer park to a church parking lot, where a detective that was in the neighbourhood investigating a murder arrived. After this investigator talked with the police officer, Latoya was then taken to this investigators homicide office. The investigator had been investigating the murder of Carlos Garza, who was found dead in his apartment, with his door kicked in, sometime after my brother and I attempted to visit him.
The day of Carlos Garza's murder, the police were given a description, by a lady friend of Carlos who was present when a man with a silver 2-pac necklace had threatened Carlos's life, sometime before he was found dead.
However this detective couldn't locate this man.
So because my brother and I, as a result of our gang affiliation and flamboyant lifestyle, were known in the neighbourhood's police patrol circles, this detective saw an opportunity to end his unfruitful investigation by making my brother and I the next target, taking full advantage of Latoya's vulnerable predicament.
When Latoya arrived at the detective's homicide office, she was forced info on how the detective thought Carlos was murdered. He told her if she didn't sign a statement against either my Brother or me, that she was going to jail for Capital Murder. Scared for her life and the life of my brothers baby she was pregnant with, she signed the statement the detective typed against me; a statement comparing me to the rapper, 2-Pac, in a desperate attempt to connect me to the silver 2-Pac necklace worn by the man the detective couldn't find. in order to keep Latoya from rebelling against this coercion, her charges of assault on a public servant, failure to I.D, as well as her outstanding warrants were all dropped and she went home from the homicide office. She never saw a jail cell. When the arresting officer was questioned at my trial about what happened to latoyas charges, he said he didn't know.
The detective then asked my brother to come to his office so he could talk about a murder. When he got there the detective changed it up and told him if he didn't sign a statement against me-since a Capital Murder conviction cannot occur on one statement alone- not only would he get locked up on Capital Murder charges, but they would lock up his pregnant girlfriend as well. Scared to death, he signed the statement, "to get out of there" as he testified at my trial. It didn't matter that the statement the detective typed created a murder that the prosecutor's own medical examiner's testimony refuted, based on the evidence.
The injustices only goes further. The prosecutor racially excluded African Americans from serving on my jury by, first, using a jury shuffle to move all the African Americans in the jury pool from the front of the courtroom, to the back, in hopes we would amass a jury before interviewing them. Yet, we, the defense, fought our way through the jury pool and still made it to these African Americans. However, the prosecutor then used her peremptory strikes to strike these African Americans from serving on my jury. My attorneys raised a "Batson" challenge forcing the prosecutor to give "race-neutral" reasons for her strikes. And when she did, the trial judge felt they were indeed race-neutral.
The prosecutor said that she used the jury shuffle to move to the back of the courtroom those with occupations such as defense lawyers, social workers and teachers. Yet there was only one teacher seated among the first 20 potential jurors, where three of the five African Americans sat.
My federal Judge ruled in my case that the prosecutor's jury shuffle was "racially motivated" and that her reasons for her peremptory strike against at least one African American was "more rationalization than rationale"
A jailhouse snitch received a 1 year, time served deal for several felony cases he had pending in several counties and states after lying on the jury stand, testifying I bragged to him, a stranger, about Carlos murder. He also said that he knew me in the freeworld, though I didn't meet him until I was wrongly incarcerated for this crime. A clear and close up picture was taken of the footprint left on Carlos's kicked in apartment door. The shoes I wore the entire day of Carlos's murder which were taken into evidence are two sizes smaller than the footprint and had a tread pattern that clearly doesn't match.
Carlos and I were friends, we always had a lot of jewellery that was expendable to us, we traded and rolled dice for each others jewellery all the time. Pictures taken 2 and a half months before Carlos's murder by his then girlfriend, of Carlos and I together with several other friends were submitted into evidence. In these pictures Carlos wore some of my jewellery and me some that was once his, the same jewellery of which I had pawned. Carlos's girlfriend as well as a mutual friend that was also in the pictures testified that Carlos and I had traded jewellery in the past and that the jewellery belonged to me. It is absurd to infer my guilt from my possession of something that once belonged to one of my friends, or else people better divest themselves of anything that belongs to a friend that is murdered.
My case is one of coincidence and corruption. The appellant system has demonstrated that they will allow me to be killed despite the corruption they know exist in my case. A perfect example is how my Federal judge agreed that the prosecutor racially excluded African Americans from serving on my jury, yet still denied my appeal. My justice will only come from media exposure and public outcry. Otherwise my blood will be poisoned with lethal chemicals they cant even use on dogs. But one thing is for certain, I will never give up, nor will I stop being a voice for my brothers and sisters on death row. I know who I am and my value to my community and will fight this to the end.
1981-????
Everything I am "Omari Huduma" The highest service.
Read reggies interview with Dee (peaceful activist and fighter for human rights
INTERVIEW