‘The Phantom’ Review: A Fascinating and Ultimately Infuriating Look at a Fatal Miscarriage of Justice in Texas
Joe Leydon Film Critic“If you’re poor and have no money, and can’t get yourself a lawyer who really gives a shit about your case, you’re going to die,” a defense attorney ruefully notes at one point in “The Phantom,” a fascinating and ultimately infuriating documentary.This isn’t an entirely fitting description of what befell Carlos DeLuna, a young Hispanic man who was executed in 1989 for a brutal 1983 murder in Corpus Christi that he almost certainly did not commit. Indeed, the film, skillfully and compellingly directed by Patrick Forbes (“Wikileaks: Secrets and Lies”), indicates that DeLuna’s defenders were not indifferent, or incompetent, but grievously (and maybe deliberately) misinformed about mitigating evidence.