During the years following the conviction, the surviving victim, the co-defendant, the district attorney, and the jury forewoman made public statements that cast doubt on Cantu's guilty verdict.

The neighborhood was home to a loose band of tough kids called the Grey Eagles, of which Cantu became a leader despite being rather small and in special-ed classes at school.

[1] His older brothers had been arrested on drug and theft charges, but despite several run-ins with the police, Ruben never was convicted of anything before the November 1984 crime that led to his execution.

Juan Moreno survived the attack and was able to leave the house and call for help shortly after the event, though he lost one lung, one kidney, and part of his stomach.

Short on leads other than Moreno's description of two Latinos aged roughly 14 and 19, a neighborhood beat officer passed along a rumor from the halls of South San Antonio High School, where Cantu was in ninth grade.

One day later, a third homicide detective picked up Moreno (an undocumented immigrant from Mexico at the time), drove him to the police station, sat him down, and showed him the same group of photos that included Cantu.

This person, whose only criminal record is a single misdemeanor domestic assault conviction, denied that he had anything to do with the robbery and murder when he was interviewed by the Houston Chronicle in 2005.

"[1] On August 24, 1993, at 22 minutes after midnight, at the age of 26, Cantu died by lethal injection, becoming the fifth juvenile offender to be executed by Texas.

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 2000.

He went on to say that if Cantu was innocent, that meant the person who committed the murder remained free and that "the misconduct by police officers could be addressed today.

"[6] Bexar County (San Antonio) District Attorney Susan Reed indicated to Rick Casey of the Houston Chronicle that she may bring a "murder by perjury" charge against Moreno, the surviving victim of the robbery-shooting and key prosecution witness.

In 2006, Reed said that she was "deeply skeptical" of someone who recants testimony they gave 20 years previously but agreed that Cantu should not have been prosecuted as a death penalty case.

However, critics say the report is compromised by the fact Reed was the judge who rejected Cantu's appeal in 1988 and set his execution date in 1993.