The Phantom
Director
Patrick Forbes
Producer
Mark Bentley
Genre
Documentary
Release
2021
Executive Producer
Doug Liman
About

THE PHANTOM tells the story of one of the darkest episodes in the long history of American justice. A story of how the State of Texas knowingly sent an innocent man to his death and left a serial killer at large. A case in which - for the first time - it can be conclusively proven that the US courts executed a blameless man. This film uncovers the shocking truth behind a tale of murder, corruption and lies that unfolded in the dusty, desperate streets of a Texas oil town nearly thirty years ago.

www.thephantommovie.com

A fascinating and ultimately infuriating look at a fatal miscarriage of justice in Texas.

Variety

The incident and its aftermath has an entire thriller's worth of twists and turns, and the film makes persuasive arguments regarding racial bias and the death penalty.

Cinemalogue
The Story

On a cold February night in 1983, Wanda Lopez was stabbed to death while she worked at a Corpus Christi Texas gas station. 21 year old Carlos DeLuna was arrested, and over the next six years, through his trial and subsequent imprisonment he protested his innocence, declaring that it was another Carlos who committed the crime. The prosecution insisted that this other Carlos was a “phantom’ and didn’t exist.


Through illuminating interviews with witnesses, Carlos DeLuna's family members, and legal experts the film asks, for the first time since 1983, if the judicial system executed an innocent man, examining key evidence that calls into question whether or not Carlos DeLuna was right about the other Carlos. Was he a phantom after all, or was he a brutal killer, and did a poor Hispanic young man have any chance within a justice system and a society that by its actions seemed to regard him as disposable?

An Oxford Films and Grain Media Production

Into Dust
Orlando von Einsiedel