Texas | New Evidence Suggests Ivan Cantu’s Innocence, But Will Anyone Stop His Execution?

Sister Helen Prejean is trying to keep Texas from killing death row inmate Ivan Cantu. Prejean, the famed death penalty opponent, joined MoveOn.org in a virtual meeting last week to plead for a delay in Cantu’s execution, scheduled for Feb. 28.

“Even if you’re for the death penalty, you believe in fairness,” Prejean said. “There was no fairness at this trial. All we’re asking is to delay the execution of Ivan Cantu long enough to be able to have a hearing and an inquiry into the new evidence that’s been presented.”

The new evidence unearthed in Cantu’s case over the last several years has come from private investigator Matt Duff, who has tracked his work in his Cousins by Blood podcast. Duff has pieced together information demonstrating that key witnesses against Cantu – his former girlfriend Amy Boettcher and her brother Jeff – lied under oath at his murder trial. The evidence was persuasive enough that Collin County District Judge Benjamin Smith stopped Cantu’s execution in April of last year, one week before it was set to be carried out. He ordered the same thing that Prejean is asking for now – a hearing in court to examine the new evidence. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned Smith’s ruling last autumn, offering no explanation for its decision. No court has appraised the evidence, according to the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.

Cantu stood trial in 2001 for the murders of his cousin, James Mosqueda, and Mosqueda’s girlfriend, Amy Kitchen. According to court documents, Boettcher testified that Cantu left their apartment on the evening of Nov. 3, 2000, vowing to kill Mosqueda, and returned an hour later with blood-spattered pants and socks, which he placed in a kitchen trash can. She also said that Cantu threw a Rolex watch that he said he had taken from Mosqueda out of a car window as the couple drove to a Dallas nightclub after the murders.

But in 2020, Cantu’s attorneys presented testimony from a law enforcement officer who swore that she found no bloody clothes in Cantu’s kitchen trash can in a search conducted shortly after the murders, while Cantu and Boettcher were away – suggesting that Cantu may have been framed. They also submitted proof that the Rolex watch Boettcher claimed Cantu had thrown out of the car window had been discovered in Mosqueda’s home after the murders and returned to his family.

Jeff Boettcher testified at the murder trial that Cantu had told him in advance of his plan to kill Mosqueda. But after Amy Boettcher died in 2021, Jeff contacted the Collin County district attorney’s office and recanted his story in a videotaped confession, saying he lied on the witness stand. He expressed remorse that his testimony had helped put Cantu on death row.

MoveOn.org has collected 85,000 signatures asking for a halt of Cantu’s execution, an investigation into the case by the Collin County District Attorney’s Office, and a court hearing on the new evidence. Cantu’s attorney, Gena Bunn, has asked the CCA to reconsider its decision not to conduct a hearing. Kim Kardashian, Martin Sheen, Jane Fonda, and Mandy Patinkin have also requested a halt to the execution and Prejean is leading a rally on Feb. 22 at the Collin County courthouse to demand a hearing. She said that if the execution isn’t halted she’ll be at Cantu’s side as he dies.

“He’s asked me to be with him if they execute him, and to pray with him,” Prejean said. “But there’s no way I’m just going to be with this man and pray with him and ease him into eternity without doing everything I know to do to resist this death. Because there’s so many wrongs that have been done.”

Source: austinchronicle.com, Brant Bingamon, February 23, 2024

_____________________________________________________________________

Twitter/X | Facebook | Telegram | Contact Us

SUPPORT DEATH PENALTY NEWS

Buy Me a Coffee!

Israel builds execution chamber for Palestinians convicted of murder

In March, the Knesset approved legislation that calls for the execution of Palestinians convicted by a military court of killing Israelis Israeli authorities are preparing a prison wing—replete with an execution chamber—designated specifically for Palestinian prisoners convicted of murder, Israel’s i24NEWS channel reported Tuesday. The move comes after the Knesset (Israel’s parliament) approved legislation in March that calls for the execution of Palestinian prisoners convicted by a military court of murdering Israelis.

Florida executes William Frances Silvia

Florida executed its 13th death row prisoner of the year Tuesday evening amid the state’s aggressive use of the death penalty championed by Governor Ron DeSantis. William Frances Silvia, 61, who was convicted of fatally shooting his estranged wife and injuring his mother-in-law in 2006, was pronounced dead at 6:11 p.m. after receiving the lethal three-drug injection at Florida State Prison. At 6 p.m. Tuesday, Silvia was already strapped to a gurney with an IV in his arm when the curtain to the death chamber went up. He remained relatively motionless with his eyes and mouth open throughout most of the execution while a priest sat at his feet and prayed.

Alabama executes Jeremy Williams

Tennessee and Oklahoma have put inmates to death within 30 minutes of each other, and Alabama followed suit hours later as U.S. states executed three men in one day. Tennessee and Oklahoma put inmates to death within 30 minutes of each other Thursday, and Alabama followed suit hours later as U.S. states executed three men by lethal injection in one day for the first time since 2010. The Tennessee man was executed for killing a maid at a motel in 1985, and the Oklahoma man for killing his girlfriend in 2003. In Alabama, a man was put to death Thursday evening for killing a 5-year-old girl he had paid her mother to abuse.

Tennessee | The doctor who helps put prisoners to death

Dr. Mark Fowler assisted in the failed execution of a Tennessee prisoner. Physicians are meant to heal patients—why is he working in the death chamber? Mark Fowler, a physician with 25 years’ experience, stepped beneath the bright lights and approached the middle-aged man lying on a gurney. Around him, people in medical gowns prepared needles and sterile tubing. It had all the appearances of a hospital setting. Fowler had been called in to help establish an IV line through which the 57-year-old man, Tony Carruthers, would be injected with pharmaceutical drugs. The team had struggled to find a vein, so Fowler was summoned to set a central line—an intravenous catheter inserted into the major vein below the collarbone.

Spared execution eight times, oldest inmate in US dies at 101 after 76 years behind bars

Francis Clifford Smith was given his last meal eight times. But after being spared execution each time, he went on to be regarded as the longest-serving prisoner in the US before dying in June at 101 years old. Convicted of murder in 1950 when he was 25, he always maintained his innocence, those who knew him told the BBC. Andrius Banevicius, the public information officer for Connecticut's Department of Correction, recounted how Smith used to feed the birds while in Osborn Prison, earning him the nickname The Birdman of Osborn.

Cartoons about Capital Punishment

More cartoons about capital punishment HERE

Alabama is trying a death penalty bait-and-switch

For a decade, Alabama death row inmate Jeffrey Lee has been clear that he does not want to be executed by lethal injection . But that is what awaits him on September 17 . He faces that prospect because the state has been enjoined from using nitrogen hypoxia , the alternative execution method he preferred, to put him to death. Having failed to show that its nitrogen hypoxia protocol is constitutionally acceptable, Alabama wants a do-over to force Lee to die by lethal injection as a result of its own failure. It should not get one. Alabama should only be able to put Lee to death if it can fix nitrogen hypoxia’s constitutional defects.

Oklahoma executes Carlos Cuesta-Rodriguez

Oklahoma has carried out 1 of 3 executions set for the same day in the United States in another sign of the resurgence of the death penalty in the country. Carlos Cuesta-Rodriguez was pronounced dead at 10:13 a.m. on Thursday, Aug. 13, at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester. He was put to death by lethal injection for the murder of his common-law wife in 2003 at their Oklahoma City home. He admitted to police he shot her twice during an argument. Cuesta-Rodriguez, 70, did not fight for his life, stunning his attorneys in July when he told the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board that he didn't want clemency. "It's time for me to pay for what I did," he said.

Tennessee executes Darrell Hines

The state has spent millions of dollars over decades to execute a seriously ill man who was already incarcerated. The state of Tennessee executed death row inmate Darrell Hines Thursday morning, according to an advocacy group. No formal announcement of the execution has been issued by state leaders yet. The execution was slated for 10 a.m. Thursday at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. [DPN update] Hines was pronounced dead at 10:43 a.m. CDT. His last meal was fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, coleslaw, corn, fries, biscuits, a chicken sandwich, chocolate chip cake, and sweet tea.

The 'Black Widow' shakes Iran: 10 death sentences for a serial killer who killed 12 men

Kolthum Akbari, an Iranian woman widely dubbed the “Black Widow,” was convicted of serial murders of elderly men she married, often temporarily. Official accounts generally center on 11 murders (plus one attempted murder), though Akbari herself gave varying figures and investigations suggested she had many more marriages. The sentencing occurred primarily in September 2025 in Mazandaran Province, with ongoing reporting and updates into 2026. The 56- to 59-year-old killer confessed to killing at least 11 elderly men after temporarily or officially marrying them; Iranian authorities have linked her to additional marriages and possible further victims.

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog