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Texas DEATH Row INMATE Ivan Cantu Could Be INNOCENT After Questions Raised in Case

With days left before he’s executed, Ivan Cantu insists he’s innocent of double-murder...Texas man faces execution despite new evidence

CNN 24 FEB 2024

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The Allan B. Polunsky Unit in Livingston, Texas, which houses the death row for men.

Ivan Cantu says he has insisted for more than 20 years that he’s innocent of the two murders that landed him on Texas’ death row. But with a week until his execution, he’s running out of time to make his case.

“The clock is ticking,” Cantu said in an interview Wednesday, a week before his execution scheduled for February 28. He expressed hope the courts will stay his execution, or Gov. Greg Abbott will grant him a reprieve, allowing him time to argue he was deprived of a fair trial and framed by the true killers.

But he also entertained “the worst-case scenario”: “They ignore everything and place me on that gurney and kill me.”

Cantu’s hopes rest in a flurry of litigation before the courts and a clemency petition, which collectively claim myriad issues with his conviction in the 2000 murders of his cousin, James Mosqueda, and Mosqueda’s fiancée, Amy Kitchen.

Cantu and his attorney argue the state’s key witnesses – Cantu’s then-girlfriend and her brother –– gave false testimony at trial. Additionally, they say newly uncovered evidence corroborates a story Cantu relayed at the time of the killings, suggesting his cousin was killed by rival drug dealers who threatened Cantu the night before.

Cantu has asked for a hearing and either a lesser sentence or a 120-day reprieve. The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles is expected to vote on its clemency recommendation two days before the execution, Cantu’s attorney, Gena Bunn, told CNN. But the final decision is the governor’s, and he is not bound by the board’s recommendation.

Crucially, much of the evidence being argued today has never been presented at a court hearing. Similar arguments were included in a filing last April, shortly before Cantu was last scheduled to be executed. A judge subsequently withdrew the execution date, but last August, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals dismissed Cantu’s request “without considering the merits of the claims.”

Three of Cantu’s jurors hope his execution is stalled while the evidence is reviewed, his petition says, in addition to high-profile supporters like Sister Helen Prejean and Kim Kardashian, who’s urged her followers on X to sign a petition for the withdrawal of his execution date. As of Friday, it had collected more than 100,000 signatures.

Perhaps his most important ally is Matt Duff, who uncovered much of the evidence now undergirding Cantu’s innocence claim and documented his independent review in a podcast. Bunn called Duff’s information “critical,” and a “boon” to Cantu’s case.

Duff’s investigation shows “the system’s broken,” Cantu said, pointing to the cases of Rodney Reed and Melissa Lucio, other Texas death row inmates who claim they were wrongfully convicted.

Indeed, at least 196 people sentenced to death since 1973 have subsequently been exonerated, 16 of them in Texas, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

“If you’re nearing 200 exonerations across the country and you know that there are innocent people on death row with the possibility of getting executed, you need to stop it,” he said.

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Ivan Cantu is scheduled to be executed in Texas on February 28 for the murders of his cousin and his cousin's fiancee in 2000. Cantu says he has maintained his innocence, and new evidence uncovered in recent years raises questions about his case.