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Ivan Cantu was executed by the State of Texas for a double murder

According to court documents Ivan Cantu would rob James Mosqueda and Amy Kitchen and during the process of the robbery would shoot and kill the pair

After the murders Ivan Cantu would take a number of belongings from the home before fleeing

Ivan Cantu would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death

Ivan Cantu would be executed by lethal injection on February 28 2024

Ivan Cantu Execution

The state of Texas on Wednesday executed death row inmate Ivan Cantu, who was convicted and sentenced to death for the 2000 murders of his cousin and his cousin’s fiancée – though he insisted until his death that he was innocent.

Cantu, 50, was put to death by lethal injection, with the time of death recorded as 6:47 p.m., the Texas Department of Criminal Justice said in a news release.

With his last words, Cantu maintained he was innocent of the murders of James Mosqueda, his cousin, and Amy Kitchen, a nursing student.

“I’d like to address the Kitchens and Mosqueda families. I want you to know that I never killed James and Amy,” Cantu said. “And if I did, if I knew who did, you would’ve been the first to know any information I would’ve had that would’ve helped to bring justice to James and Amy.”

Collin County District Attorney Greg Willis, however, said Cantu had “finally met with justice” after more than two decades of courts “comprehensively reviewing” his case.

“My hopeful prayer is for the victims’ families, friends, and loved ones to find a long-awaited sense of peace,” Willis said in a statement.

There were no issues with the lethal injection, which took about 21 minutes, a TDCJ spokesperson said afterwards.

In addition to three journalists, the execution was witnessed by Kitchen’s brother, her sister-in-law and a family friend. Cantu had asked not to have any witnesses of his own, the spokesperson said, though he was accompanied by his spiritual advisor, anti-death penalty activist Sister Helen Prejean of “Dead Man Walking” fame.

Michael Graczyk, a media witness who covered the execution for the Associated Press, said Cantu appeared in “pretty good spirits” before the execution. Prejean held Cantu’s hand and whispered into his ear for about two minutes before he gave his final statement. Cantu “didn’t sound bitter, he didn’t sound irate” during his last statement, Graczyk said. “He just insisted he was innocent.”

Cantu and his advocates — among them three of his trial jurors — had called for his execution to be halted to allow time for new evidence to be evaluated and for the inmate to argue he was deprived of a fair trial and, in his telling, framed by those truly responsible for the killings.

But the options to stop the execution swiftly dwindled in the hours before it was carried out Wednesday evening. The night prior, a federal appeals court declined to intervene – a ruling that followed another earlier in the week by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which similarly rejected an appeal by Cantu and a request to stay his execution.

Cantu’s attorney, Gena Bunn, did not appeal the case to the US Supreme Court, saying Tuesday night’s order by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals meant the inmate’s team “could not find a viable path forward.”

Separately, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles had unanimously voted against recommending a commutation of Cantu’s sentence or a 120-day reprieve. As a result, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott could have, at most, granted Cantu a one-time 30-day reprieve.

But he did not, despite the pleas of Cantu’s advocates, who included reality star and entrepreneur Kim Kardashian and the actor Martin Sheen. His staunchest supporter, however, was perhaps his first: His mother, Sylvia Cantu, remained convinced of her son’s innocence, she told CNN Tuesday, a day before he was put to death.

“It’s a hard thing to accept,” she said of the prospect that her son would die before her. “But if I would have it different, I’d trade my life for Ivan’s. Take me, not him.”

In pressing for his execution to be stopped, Ivan Cantu had pointed to the cases of other Texas death row inmates like Rodney Reed and Melissa Lucio, who claim they also were wrongfully convicted. Indeed, at least 196 people sentenced to death in the United States since 1973 have been exonerated, 16 of them in Texas, according to the non-profit Death Penalty Information Center.

Cantu’s execution took place just hours after Idaho officials on Wednesday halted the lethal injection of death row inmate Thomas Creech, 73, in the latest example of a state struggling to carry out the process because of an inability to establish an IV line.
Prosecutor still ‘convinced’ of Cantu’s guilt

In court filings, Cantu and his attorney claimed false testimony was presented at trial by the state’s key witnesses, including one who has since recanted. They also contended newly uncovered evidence supports an account Cantu told at the time of the killings, suggesting Mosqueda – an alleged drug dealer, per the inmate’s filings – was targeted and killed by rivals who also threatened Cantu over his cousin’s alleged debts. Cantu also had argued ineffective assistance of counsel, pointing in part to his trial attorneys’ decision to not call a single witness during the guilt-innocence phase of his trial.

Prosecutors, however, rejected these claims, writing in their own court filings that Cantu’s arguments do nothing to “impugn the integrity of the guilty verdict.”

Willis remained “fully convinced” of Cantu’s guilt, he said in a statement last week, citing the “undeniable evidence” featured at trial.

Cantu’s fingerprint was found on the magazine inside the gun used to kill Mosqueda and Kitchen, and DNA analysis showed blood on jeans found in Cantu’s trash can belonged to Mosqueda and Kitchen, according to prosecutors.

“It’s my firm belief that justice has been done in this case and that a Collin County jury’s verdict should be carried out on February 28th,” Willis said.

Cantu’s case was previously upheld on appeal. But he and his attorney say the evidence now supporting his innocence claim – much of it uncovered by podcaster Matt Duff – has not been heard by the courts.

Similar arguments were included in an appeal last April, shortly before Cantu was last scheduled to be executed. A judge subsequently withdrew Cantu’s execution date, but the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ultimately dismissed Cantu’s request without considering the merits of the claims.
Jury foreman saw ‘holes’ in the case

Collectively, the evidence was enough to convince three of Cantu’s jurors to join the effort to halt Wednesday’s execution. They included the panel’s foreman, who now fears the jury was presented with an incomplete picture of the case, he told CNN.

“I’m convinced that there’s some holes in this,” Jeff Calhoun said, adding he took his responsibility as a juror very seriously.

Meanwhile, Cantu’s supporters dedicated themselves to raising awareness about the case – a petition calling for a withdrawal of his execution date garnered more than 150,000 signatures – and to pressing GOP Gov. Greg Abbott to issue a reprieve.

“There are all these questions over the actual guilt of this man,” Prejean told CNN’s Jake Tapper this week, calling on people to contact Abbott on Cantu’s behalf. “He has one of the last vestiges of the divine right of kings. He’s a safety valve in all this. When justice is not done in the courts or you question it … he can grant a reprieve long enough to be able to look at the new evidence, which no court is yet willing to hear.”

Cantu had asked in his clemency petition for a hearing and either a commutation to a life sentence or a 120-day reprieve.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/28/us/texas-execution-ivan-cantu/index.html

Ivan Cantu was sentenced to death by the State of Texas for a double murder

According to court documents Ivan Cantu would fatally shoot James Mosqueda and Amy Kitchen. Following the murder Cantu would steal a number of belongings of the couple

Ivan Cantu would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death

Ivan Cantu was executed on February 28 2024

Ivan Cantu Photos

Ivan Cantu FAQ

Where Is Ivan Cantu Now

Ivan Cantu is incarcerated at the Polunsky Unit

Ivan Cantu Case

A Texas judge canceled next week’s scheduled execution of Ivan Cantu a day after a new appeal claimed he was wrongfully convicted with false testimony from two key witnesses. Jurors also did not see key evidence that might have convinced them he was innocent, the appeal claims.

On Wednesday evening, state district Judge Benjamin Smith, a Republican in Collin County, withdrew his previous court order setting Cantu’s execution for April 26, saying the new arguments require further review. Two of Cantu’s original jurors have said they no longer support his execution after hearing new details of his innocence claims.

Ivan Cantu, 49, has been on death row for more than two decades. He was convicted in 2001 for the Dallas murders of his cousin and his cousin’s fiancee, James Mosqueda and Amy Kitchen. Prosecutors have argued Cantu’s guilt largely by pointing to forensic evidence and the testimony of Amy Boettcher, Cantu’s fiancee

Mosqueda’s car was found at Cantu’s apartment the day after the bodies were discovered, and later — while Cantu was out of town — police found bloody pants and socks in his trash can that matched the victims’ DNA, according to court filings. The gun used in the murders was found at Cantu and Boettcher’s friend’s house with Cantu’s fingerprint on the magazine. After Cantu was arrested, Boettcher also pinned the murders on him.

Ivan Cantu, however, says he was framed. Mosqueda was a local drug dealer who likely instead was killed by a rival drug dealer whom he owed a lot of money, Cantu argued in his filing.

Ivan Cantu and Boettcher had left for Arkansas on a pre-planned trip hours before the bodies were discovered, according to the prisoner’s new appeal. In a phone call with one of Mosqueda’s drug associates shortly after the murders, which Cantu did not know police were listening in on, Cantu said a man dressed as a pizza delivery man had threatened him at his apartment several days earlier. Cantu said the man told him he was looking for Mosqueda, who owed him money for drugs.

Ivan Cantu told the man that he gave a warning about the threat to Mosqueda, who asked Cantu to swap cars with him so it would look like he wasn’t home and someone else was visiting. Cantu agreed to come back to Texas to talk to police about the murders, his lawyers said.

After the bloody clothes were found in his apartment, he was arrested on his return to Collin County. Boettcher went back to her parents’ house in Arkansas, ultimately telling police Cantu committed the murders and testifying against him at trial. She said Cantu had told her the night before the victims’ bodies were found that he was going to kill them. She said he left and came back with a swollen face and bloody clothes, and then they went out to party. Both were drug users.

Cantu’s lawyers argue that Boettcher fingered Cantu because she feared she would be targeted for the deaths otherwise. Her stepfather said she called him after Cantu’s arrest and said “I’m scared to death they are going to kill me. Get me out of here,” according to the filing.

Cantu’s appeal attempts to pick apart Boettcher’s statements. His lawyers said no one else who saw Cantu that night noted his face was swollen or bruised. Mosqueda’s watch, which Boettcher said she saw Cantu toss out of their car the night of the murders, had been found by one of Kitchen’s relatives at Mosqueda’s house and turned in to police, Cantu’s lawyers said, a detail they learned only in 2019.

Plus, Boettcher testified that Cantu had proposed to her with a diamond engagement ring that he had stolen from Kitchen’s body after killing her, but witnesses have since said the couple announced their engagement and showed off Boettcher’s ring a week earlier.

Boettcher died in 2021 at age 44, according to Cantu’s private investigator and an obituary. The Collin County district attorney’s office declined to comment on the pending case.

Cantu’s lawyers also attempted to add weight to the argument that he was framed by citing a police officer who, during a welfare check at Cantu’s apartment shortly after the murders were discovered, said she saw no bloody clothes in the unlidded trash can prominently displayed in the kitchen during her original search. It’s unclear if the officer searched the trash can, but she has since said in an affidavit that she believes she would have seen the clothes, “leading me to believe the evidence in the trash can was not there at the time of the search.”

The clothes were found three days later during a police search, before Cantu got home from Arkansas. Cantu’s lawyers also said phone records showed a call was made from his apartment while he was in Arkansas, which they said indicates someone else placed the clothes there.

As for his fingerprint on the gun, Cantu insisted he had never handled that gun, but had handled several other guns with Boettcher in the days leading up to the murders, according to private investigator Matt Duff, who launched a podcast about Cantu’s case in 2020 after he began investigating it. Duff theorized that a magazine he touched could have been inserted into the murder weapon, as his prints weren’t on the gun itself.

Finally, Cantu’s lawyers pointed to since recanted testimony by Boettcher’s brother, Jeff. Jeff Boettcher testified at trial that Cantu had talked to him about killing Mosqueda, that he had seen Cantu with the murder weapon and that Cantu had asked him to help clean up after the murders.

Shortly after his sister’s death, Jeff Boettcher began calling prosecutors in 2022 to recant his testimony. He told the district attorney’s office that he was on drugs when he spoke to police and while he was at trial, and what he said wasn’t true.

Since the new arguments were raised to Cantu’s jurors who handed down the death penalty in 2001, at least two have pushed to halt his execution.
“I am disturbed by the possibility that false testimony and evidence was presented to me and the other jurors at trial,” Montra Marie Biggs said in a signed statement this month. “As a juror who served in this case, I do not want to see Mr. Cantu executed without getting a full hearing on this new information.”
It’s unclear if the arguments will ever be heard in court, however. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has final say on whether the appeal can proceed, and it has not yet ruled on the day-old filing. In the meantime, Cantu will remain on death row.

On Wednesday, his mother walked through the Texas Capitol, trying to get any lawmaker she could to call for halting her son’s execution. Sylvia Cantu said her son never had a chance, blaming lazy defense attorneys and misconduct by prosecutors and police. But she said he always was hopeful that he would get justice.

https://www.texastribune.org/2023/04/20/texas-execution-ivan-cantu/