Texas death row prisoner Ivan Cantu clings to hope

Ivan Cantu

The Allan B Polunsky Unit just outside Livingston, Texas, is an intimidating place.

As a maximum security facility housing all the state's death row prisoners, that is hardly surprising.

But the watch-towers and razor wire are only part of it. It is the buildings themselves: bleak, other-worldly boxes, apparently windowless, that are really scary.

Look more closely and you see that there are, in fact, windows but they are narrow, horizontal slits more like something from a medieval castle than anything to be gazed out of.

After being accompanied through several electronically controlled doors to the visitation centre and handing over the microphone that would be used to record his leg of our conversation, I looked around, wondering where Ivan Abner Cantu was.

"He's right there," said Jason Clark, spokesman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, pointing to a figure in white, sitting sideways against the side of a narrow visitation booth, his face only visible in profile.

It was only when I took my own seat, a couple of feet away across the thick glass, that Cantu turned to face me, a warm smile breaking out below a pair of dark brown eyes.

For the next hour it was hard to look away. The sides of the booth seemed to press in close, leaving nothing in my field of vision but a man convicted of murder.

Such was the intensity and proximity of Cantu's gaze that even the normal business of glancing down to check recording levels was suddenly a challenge.

I spoke to him by phone but thanks to the wireless microphone he was wearing his answers rang clearly in my headphones. It made him seem even closer.

This was a man who badly wanted to talk, who craves company more than almost anything else.

He said that this encounter with a complete stranger was the most exciting thing that had happened to him in ages.

In 2001, Cantu was convicted of murdering his cousin the previous year. He was initially indicted for killing his cousin's girlfriend too, but this never went to trial.

He has always professed his innocence, saying he was framed and citing the lack of DNA testing and what he claims is evidence of shoddy work on the part of his court-appointed defence team.

Last year, he was within a month of being executed, but was granted a stay. Now his case is being reviewed and Cantu says he looks forward to being released one day.

Click here to read the full article

Source: BBC News, July 6, 2012

Jun 05, 2011

I was 45 years old and doing a criminal justice degree in Louisiana when I met Ivan Cantu. I'd written to a man on death row in Texas whose story I was interested in for my course. He had learning difficulties, and Ivan, his ...

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Texas' Death Row, the infamous Allan B. Polunsky Unit, is a disgrace to the state of Texas. Click HERE to view 50 recent annotated pictures of the 'living' conditions on Texas' Death Row. These photos were provided by the State of Texas in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by attorney Yolanda Torres. They were then posted on Thomas Whitaker's blog, "Minutes Before Six". Mr. Whitaker is currently on Death Row in the state of Texas.

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