28 The death-row sleuth The EconomistDecember 21st 2019
2 ioned in retelling. He stakes out homes, offices or bars for days at a
time. He shuns technology and online sleuthing. “I have no Face-
book page. I almost never respond to texts. I have a flip phone. I’m
happy being old school,” he says. Nor does he advertise. Once he
had business cards made. He left them in a drawer.
Steady demand for his services suggests his old-school meth-
ods work. Any case begins with pouring over police and autopsy
reports, witness statements and other trial papers—these are
stacked in manila folders on his office floor, on shelves and be-
tween the memorabilia. He looks for inconsistencies. Then he
talks to the condemned man (or occasionally the condemned
woman) and their wider family.
Trudging through paperwork can expose dubious details
missed by hasty defence lawyers. One case involved fabricated bar
receipts which put an individual near the scene of a murder where
he supposedly drank, alone, $3,000-worth of beer in one evening.
Then there was the time a district attorney had scribbled on a legal
report that “Texas Rangers lied to me to get me to file charges.”
Most common, he claims, are clues implying that prosecutors
illegally withheld evidence that might have helped the defence.
“Prosecutors, including federal ones, don’t give two shits about it.”
Some witnesses’ testimony in court also proves very different
from their initial reports to police. “I find people, their statements,
are all horseshit,” he says. Getting such witnesses to talk is vital. He
knows to knock on doors between 5pm and 7pm, soon after work
ends. Like a salesman, he looks to see if twitching curtains prove
someone is at home, and places a foot in a doorway once ajar.
Typically he is active years after the crime happened. To loosen
tongues, he begins with reminiscence: if a witness has moved
from the area, he breaks the ice by bringing printed photos of their
old home, or of a loved bar. Such gestures can kindle gratitude,
maybe even trust. He tries to get people to laugh; many relax when
persuaded to share a meal. To the poor—and most of those in the
orbit of death-penalty cases are very poor—he talks about his own
past (he first removes his Rolex). In the summer months he offers
ice-cold beer from a cool box in his car.
“I like to make people think they’re smarter than me, they tend
to loosen up a lot,” he explains. He listens to check if a witness’s vo-cabulary differs from their written state-
ment, potentially a sign that the police
worked up a false record. He tells infor-
mants early what he knows “so it limits the
bullshit and lies they tell”. Witnesses don’t
usually like owning up to false testimony.
But he finds most, eventually, grow eager to
talk, to admit their misdeed. “It’s been eat-
ing them a long time.” He has no badge or
uniform, and even his occasional threat to
get a subpoena to force someone to talk is
empty. Rather he must win them over
through charm.
His ultimate appeal, though, is moral. “I
try to put the witness in the shoes of the ac-
cused. I ask, ‘Can you allow somebody to
die, if you could do something about it?’”
He says, “If you can live with yourself after
[the condemned] is killed, you’re stronger
than I am.” Tears often flow when witness-
es give up long-held secrets.
Why does he do it? Mr Reyna needs the
fees, typically several thousand dollars for
100 hours of sleuthing. There is his wish to
see truth exposed. Principles play a role,
too: he is not dead against capital punish-
ment, but hates how it is applied. “If you
have to kill a guy, execute a guy, you better
be goddamn sure,” he says. The process leading to exe-
cution cannot be trusted, he thinks, because prosecu-
tors and judges worry about being seen as tough
enough to get re-elected. He believes too few care
about the truth, especially when it concerns the poor,
dark-skinned and badly represented.The long goodbye
Mr Reyna is also wary of some campaigners against the
death penalty. He thinks they romanticise the con-
demned. Brandley was unusual, he says, as truly inno-
cent. Most of those who are wrongly sentenced to die
are, nonetheless, not angels. “There are some very bad
people, even if they didn’t kill,” he says. “Often people
are not all that innocent. Maybe you were present
when your buddy killed someone.”
In time his sleuthing may not be needed. Fully 65%
of Texans still favour the death penalty, compared with
54% of all Americans. Texas carried out eight of all the
20 executions in America between January and
November 2019. But rates are dwindling. Courts in the
Lone Star state handed down only two death sentences
in the same period. Such hesitation is at least in part
because reinvestigations have shown up so many seri-
ous flaws.
Mr Reyna will not retire. More than he loves the
fees, or even justice, he loves the work itself: “I love it.
The challenge. The battle of the wits. I want to find the
answers to things.” Blunt-spoken, stubborn, he refuses
requests to lecture on his methods and remarkable list
of cases. He wonders if the end might come when
somebody, angry at his snooping, one day pulls a trig-
ger. “People often said they would kill me, but I never
took anything as credible,” he scoffs. More likely, “I’ll
drop dead one day with my files in my arms.”
Mr Reyna, no reader of fiction, claims never to have
heard of Raymond Chandler. Chandler would have re-
cognised him on sight.
*