Texas Court Rejects Death-Row Inmate's Appeal Over Objections of 3 Jurors, Anti-Death Penalty Advocates
Critics, Citing False Testimony, Discredited Evidence, have Urged Governor Greg Abbott to Stay Ivan Cantu's Execution
By Gary Gately
A Texas appeals court has rejected an appeal from a death-row inmate scheduled to be executed tomorrow despite what several jurors, more than 147,000 people who petitioned for a stay and Catholic anti-death penalty activists call serious doubts about his conviction.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state’s highest court for criminal cases, rejected the appeal from Ivan Cantu late Tuesday afternoon. The same court had overturned a Republican judge’s decision to halt Cantu’s scheduled April 2023 execution date after an appeal detailing what his defense attorney called false testimony.
Cantu was convicted in 2001 of murdering his cousin James Mosqueda, and Mosqueda’s fiancée, Amy Kitchen, at their North Dallas home in 2000.
Cantu, now 50, has been on death row since 2001. He has always proclaimed his innocence, claiming he had been framed by the true killer, a drug dealer.
At least three members of the jury that unanimously convicted Cantu in the capital case have urged in court declarations that Cantu’s execution be halted because of evidence that has surfaced since the trial, including false testimony from witnesses and discredited evidence.
One juror wrote that testimony from the state’s star witness appeared to have been “false or misleading in many significant respects, which leads me to question the truthfulness of her testimony as a whole.”
Another juror said he was “dismayed” about false evidence in “much of the testimony and evidence which I and the other jurors relied upon at the time of trial.”
The juror added: “I am now concerned that the State may be wrongfully putting a man to death based on my verdict.”
And jury foreman Jeff Calhoun wrote in the Austin American-Statesman Sunday that private investigator and podcaster Matt 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.
“In full respect, I ask Governor [Greg] Abbott that you 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 is unfortunately flawed and therefore incomplete.”
Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy, executive director of the Catholic Mobilizing Network, a national Catholic organization working to end the death penalty and promote restorative justice, told The Catholic Observer: “It is incredibly troubling that Texas intends to move forward with the execution of Ivan Cantu. As Catholics, we believe that each person is made in the image and likeness of God, created with an inherent dignity that can never be taken away — no matter the harm we have suffered or caused.”
It’s especially troubling, Murphy said, that significant questions remain about his guilt.
“We cannot ignore that Mr. Cantu’s case also includes another, very serious, level of concern: We don’t know for certain that he is guilty of the crime for which he is set to be executed,” Murphy said. “How can we continue to support a system that will pursue death even when there are doubts about a person’s conviction? How is this justice?”
More than 1,350 Catholics across the country have emailed Abbott, a Catholic, asking him to grant Cantu a stay of clemency, Murphy said.
The Republican governor’s office did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday.
Martin Sheen, who is Catholic, joined celebrities including Jane Fonda and Kim Kardashian in urging that Cantu’s execution be stayed so a court can hear new evidence they say could exonerate him. Amnesty International has also demanded that Cantu’s execution be put off until a court reviews the evidence.
Meantime,147,589 people had signed a petition as of Tuesday night demanding that the Collin County District Attorney stay the execution in light of evidence that the star witness falsely testified against Cantu. The petition, launched by Catholic nun and anti-death penalty advocate Sister Helen Prejean, urged Abbott to grant a stay until all the evidence can be examined.
“Our criminal justice system has failed Ivan,” the petition reads. “The DA and Governor Abbott must intervene before it’s too late.”
At a news conference last week, Sister Helen said: “There’s no way I’m just going to be with this man and pray with him and ease him into eternity without doing everything I know to do to resist this death because there’s so many wrongs that have been done.”
At Cantu’s trial, prosecutors had relied heavily on the testimony of his then-fiancee, Amy Boettcher. She testified that he had fatally shot the two victims at their home and had even taken her to the crime scene and shown her the victims’ bodies.
“There’s no way I’m just going to be with this man and pray with him and ease him into eternity without doing everything I know to do to resist this death because there’s so many wrongs that have been done.” — Anti-death penalty advocate Sister Helen Prejean
Boettcher 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 North Dallas home on November 4, 2000.
Boettcher, who died in 2021, told jurors that Cantu had put blood-splattered clothing in a kitchen trash can of the apartment she shared with him. Prosecutors said DNA from the clothes matched that of the victims. Boettcher also said that the night after the murders, Cantu threw out of a moving car window a Rolex watch he said he had stolen from Mosqueda.
But in 2020, Cantu’s attorneys presented testimony from a law enforcement officer who said she found no bloody clothes in Cantu’s kitchen trash can during a search conducted just after the murders, while Cantu and Boettcher were on a trip to Arkansas. Cantu’s attorneys also submitted evidence that the Rolex watch Boettcher claimed Cantu had thrown out of the car window had been discovered in Mosqueda’s home after the murders.
After Boettcher’s 2021 death, her brother Jeff called Collin County investigators and recanted his testimony. He said he was a frequent drug user and expressed remorse for helping put Cantu on death row.
Texas has executed 586 inmates between 1976 and 2023, more than any other state, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Murphy, the director of the Catholic Mobilizing Network, lamented that Abbott has not granted Cantu a stay of execution but held out hope he may still do so.
“Governor Greg Abbott, a Catholic, has full power and authority to grant Mr. Cantu a one-time, 30-day stay of execution to allow more time for the courts to consider his pending appeals regarding the newly discovered evidence,” Murphy said. “As a governor who values the rule of law and the sanctity of life, I hope he will find it a matter of fair justice and prudent moral judgment.”
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 – have banned the death penalty.