Critics Denounce Texas Execution of Ivan Cantu, Who Went to His Death Maintaining His Innocence
More than 150,000 people had petitioned for a stay, including Catholic and other faith leaders, citing what they called false testimony and discredited evidence.
By Gary Gately
To the very end, Texas death-row inmate Ivan Abner Cantu maintained his innocence.
He was certainly not alone in doing so in his final moments — just before Texas executed him by lethal injection for the November 2000 fatal shooting of his cousin James Mosqueda and his cousin's girlfriend, Amy Kitchen.
Cantu, 50, told relatives of the victims in the execution chamber at the state penitentiary in Huntsville Wednesday evening: "I want you to know that I never killed James and Amy, and if I did, if I knew who did, you would've been the first to know any information."
Cantu, who has proclaimed his innocence since his 2000 arrest, had received extraordinary support amid widespread doubts about his conviction.
More than 150,000 people had signed a MoveOn petition launched by anti-death penalty advocate Sister Helen Prejean urging Republican Governor Greg Abbott, a Catholic, to grant a stay until all the evidence can be examined. The petition cited what it called false testimony from the state’s star witness, Cantu’s fiancée, and discredited evidence.
“We took up the cause of this man because mistakes were made at his trial,” Sister Helen said Thursday. “And we have a deficient and flawed appeal system that refused to review the substantive issues in this case.
“Ivan is a very brave man. In the final hours of his life, I granted Ivan peace as he readied himself to die. Ivan initiated more avenues in the pursuit of his exoneration than any single person I’ve counseled on death row.”
Jennifer Allmon, executive director of the Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops, called for people to “pray and petition our representatives for a reform of our death penalty due process.”
In a statement Thursday, Allmon added: “It is simply unconscionable that the courts have set an impossibly high threshold to present new evidence when a person’s life is at stake.”
At the urging of the Catholic Mobilizing Network, a national Catholic organization working to end the death penalty, more than 1,350 Catholics pleaded in emails to Abbott that he grant a 30-day stay. The network cited what it characterized as serious doubts about testimony from the state’s star witness and discredited evidence.
“It is simply unconscionable that the courts have set an impossibly high threshold to present new evidence when a person’s life is at stake” — Jennifer Allmon, executive director of the Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops
Celebrities including Martin Sheen, a Catholic, and Kim Kardashian also had urged that Cantu’s execution be put off so a court could could consider evidence discovered since his 2001 trial.
And three jurors in the capital case asked for the execution to be put on hold, also citing false testimony and discredited evidence, much of it unearthed by private investigator Matt Cousins on his podcast “Cousins By Blood.”
After Cantu’s execution, many of those who had demanded it be put off responded with an outpouring of prayers and continued to maintain he should not have been put to death.
“The state of Texas executed Ivan Cantu, despite serious doubts about his guilt and newly discovered evidence, demonstrating how our criminal legal system is more interested in vengeance than fairness,” Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy, executive director of the Catholic Mobilizing Network, said in a statement.
“Is this the justice we seek? Pursuing death when there are substantial doubts about a person’s conviction?”
Murphy noted a “haunting backdrop” to Cantu’s execution: Since capital punishment was reinstated in the U.S. in 1976, 196 people have been exonerated from death row after being sentenced to execution for a crime they did not commit.
Other Catholics, including Texas Democrat Representative Joaquín Castro and his brother, former U.S. housing secretary Julián Castro, wrote in a Dallas Morning News piece last week: “The developments in Ivan Cantu’s case have urgently called into question the burden of proof that he is guilty ‘beyond a reasonable doubt.’ If the legal system refuses to consider recanted testimony, new evidence, a potential alibi and the misgivings of multiple jurors on the case, Texas could execute an innocent man. Cantu’s case must be reopened for review.”
And at an online vigil before Cantu’s execution, Abraham Bonowitz, executive director of the anti-capital punishment organization Death Penalty Action, said: “I can’t say for sure that he’s innocent, but I can’t say for sure that he’s guilty. There’s just too much doubt.”
“The state of Texas executed Ivan Cantu, despite serious doubts about his guilt and newly discovered evidence, demonstrating how our criminal legal system is more interested in vengeance than fairness.” — Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy, executive director of the Catholic Mobilizing Network
Sheen, appearing with Sister Helen on CNN, also argued for a stay.
“It’s critical that we get a stay for Ivan and that the truth come out,” the actor said. “It can save his life and even exonerate him.”
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state’s highest criminal court, rejected an appeal from Cantu late Tuesday afternoon. The court ruled he had “failed to show he satisfies the requirements” to merit a review of his claims. The same day, a federal appeals court in Texas called evidence that has surfaced since Cantu’s trial “not credible” and said “none of it undermines the critical incriminating evidence against Cantu.”
Collin County Prosecutor Greg Willis said in a statement after Cantu’s execution, “After over two decades of multiple state and federal courts comprehensively reviewing his conviction, Ivan Cantu has finally met with justice tonight.”
Willis said “clear and powerful evidence” demonstrated Cantu’s guilt.
“My hopeful prayer is for the victims’ families, friends, and loved ones to find a long-awaited sense of peace,” Willis added. “I remain fully convinced that Ivan Cantu brutally murdered two innocent victims in 2000.”
Before Cantu’s final statement, Sister Cantu held his hand and prayed over him, and he said, “I don’t belong on this gurney,” according to The Associated Press.
Jury foreman Jeff Calhoun wrote in the Austin American-Statesman Sunday that podcaster Duff showed him evidence, which Calhoun said the state has, that the witness’s testimony was false and that the lead detective knew she was lying.
“Simply put, we jurors did not hear the truth you assume you would hear from a person under oath,” Calhoun wrote. “Bottom line, I feel like I was fooled. This trial had some fabrication and, in my opinion, the course of investigative action is incomplete.”
Calhoun called on Republican Governor Greg Abbott to “hand me back the document I signed that confirmed the jury's decision and delay the execution of Ivan Cantu so further examination can be conducted.”
“This one,” Calhoun wrote, “is unfortunately flawed and therefore incomplete.”
Cantu’s then-fiance, Amy Boettcher, the prosecution’s main witness, told jurors that Cantu had said he planned to kill his cousin, Mosqueda, described by prosecutors as a known drug dealer, a day before Mosqueda and Kitchen’s bodies were discovered at their home on November 4, 2000.
Boettcher told jurors that he had taken her to the crime scene after the murders and that she put his blood-splattered clothing in his kitchen trash can just after the murders.
But a law enforcement officer who went to Cantu’s apartment soon after the murders at the request of his mother after she learned his cousin was killed said in an affidavit that she did not see bloody clothes in the trash can.
Cantu’s attorney maintained that shows the clothes had been planted to frame him.
The attorney also submitted evidence that a Rolex watch Boettcher claimed Cantu had stolen from the victims and thrown out the car window had been discovered in Mosqueda’s home after the murders.
After Boettcher’s 2021 death, her brother Jeff Boettcher called Collin County investigators and recanted his testimony that Cantu had told him that he planned the murders before they happened, court documents show. Boettcher said he had been a frequent drug user when he testified and expressed remorse that his testimony helped put Cantu on death row.
Texas executed 586 inmates between 1976 and 2023, more than any other state, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Pope Francis revised the Catechism of the Catholic Church in 2018 to state that the death penalty is “inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.” The Catholic stance against the death penalty applies “even after the commission of very serious crimes,” the Catechism states.
A Gallup poll in November showed 53% of Americans support the death penalty, the lowest since 1972.
And a growing number of U.S. states — now 23 — and the District of Columbia have banned the death penalty while three states have imposed moratoriums on executions.
Meanwhile, death penalty opponents focused this evening on Idaho, which botched the scheduled execution Wednesday of convicted serial killer Thomas Eugene Creech, 73, after repeated failed attempts to tap a vein to administer a lethal injection. Creech was sentenced to death after being convicted of killing a fellow inmate in 1981.