Texas killed Ivan Cantu late last month by lethal injection despite legitimate questions about his trial and conviction. Cantu’s original defense attorneys didn’t call any witnesses and rested their case after the prosecution presented its evidence. There was false testimony, evidence withheld by the prosecution, and key witnesses later recanted. Even his jurors supported his appeals, believing they did not hear all the evidence at trial.
Cantu, who was 50, was convicted of killing his cousin, James Mosqueda, and Mosqueda’s fiancée, Amy Kitchen, in 2001. Prosecutors argued that Cantu killed Mosqueda, who was a drug dealer, and Kitchen while trying to steal cash and drugs from Mosqueda’s home. But Cantu always maintained that a rival drug dealer killed Mosqueda and that he was framed for the murders.
Sister Helen Prejean, Cantu’s spiritual advisor, was with Cantu in the execution chamber holding his hand and praying over him. “I was there with him, standing near his face, holding his hand, and praying into his ear until the chemicals killed him. God’s grace was with him and with me,” she wrote on X.
He was sentenced to death in 2001.
Last month, a district court judge issued a stay on Cantu’s April 26 execution date but, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals dismissed the stay without considering the merits of his claims. And the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appealsl also dismissed his new evidence, finding it wasn’t “credible.”