Texas man executed for the slayings of 2, including his cousin
HUNTSVILLE, TEXAS
A Texas man who had long claimed his conviction more than 20 years ago was based on false testimony and questionable evidence was executed Wednesday for fatally shooting two people, including his cousin.
Ivan Cantu received a lethal injection and was pronounced dead at 6:47 p.m. at the state penitentiary in Huntsville for the November 2000 fatal shooting of his cousin, James Mosqueda, 27, and his cousin’s girlfriend, Amy Kitchen, 22.
In final words from the execution chamber, the 50-yearold inmate said several times that he was innocent.
“I want you to know that I never killed James and Amy,” he told relatives and a friend of Kitchen who stood feet away from him while watching through a window. “And if I did, if I knew who did, you would’ve been the first to know any information.”
He said he wanted them to know he didn’t think his death “will bring you closure. If it does, if this is what it takes or have any reservations off in your mind, then so be it.”
Prosecutors had said Cantu killed Mosqueda, who dealt illegal drugs, and Kitchen as he tried to steal cocaine, marijuana and cash from his cousin’s north Dallas home.
The inmate, who was convicted in 2001, had long claimed a rival drug dealer killed his cousin in a dispute over money.
As a lethal dose of the sedative pentobarbital began flowing, he began snoring. After the eighth snore, which was accompanied by a gasp, he stopped all movement. Twenty-one minutes after the drugs started, he was pronounced dead.
The Texas execution proceeded hours after Cantu’s attorney, Gena Bunn, said she would not make a final appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court for lack of “a viable path” for the high court’s consideration of the case.
Two lower courts on Tuesday denied Cantu’s request to intervene. And on Monday, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles voted 7-0 against commuting Cantu’s death sentence to a lesser penalty.
Efforts to delay Cantu’s execution had received the support of faith leaders, celebrities such as Kim Kardashian and actor Martin Sheen, and U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, and his brother, former U.S. Housing Secretary Julian Castro.
Collin County District Attorney Greg Willis, whose office convicted Cantu, said that evidence presented at trial proved Cantu committed the killings.
“I remain fully convinced that Ivan Cantu brutally murdered two innocent victims in 2000,” Willis said in a recent statement.
But Bunn had written in Cantu’s clemency application that new evidence “impugns the integrity of the State’s case for guilt and raises the specter that the State of Texas could execute an innocent man.”
Of the new evidence presented by Cantu, Willis’ office had said “none of it destroys the cornerstones of the State’s case.”