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A Texas inmate who had lengthy claimed his conviction greater than 20 years in the past was based mostly on false testimony and questionable proof was executed on Wednesday night for fatally capturing two folks, together with his cousin.
Ivan Cantu obtained a deadly injection and was pronounced useless at 6.47pm on the state penitentiary in Huntsville for the November 2000 deadly capturing of his cousin, James Mosqueda, 27, and his cousin’s girlfriend, Amy Kitchen, 22. In remaining phrases from the execution chamber, he stated a number of instances that he was harmless of the killings.
Prosecutors stated Cantu killed Mosqueda, who dealt unlawful medicine, and Kitchen as he tried to steal cocaine, marijuana and money from his cousin’s north Dallas house. The 50-year-old inmate, who was convicted in 2001, had lengthy claimed a rival drug seller killed his cousin in a dispute over cash.
Cantu’s was the primary execution in Texas this yr. It was one in all two scheduled for Wednesday within the US. However hours earlier, Idaho authorities halted the execution of the serial killer Thomas Eugene Creech after a medical group repeatedly did not discover a vein to insert an IV line wanted to manage a deadly injection. Creech was condemned for killing a fellow prisoner with a battery-filled sock in 1981.
The Texas execution proceeded hours after Cantu’s lawyer, Gena Bunn, stated she wouldn’t be submitting a remaining enchantment with the US supreme courtroom as she “couldn’t discover a viable path” during which the case may very well be reviewed by the courtroom.
Two decrease courts on Tuesday had denied Cantu’s request to remain his execution. The Texas courtroom of legal appeals dismissed his petition on procedural grounds and with out reviewing its deserves. The fifth US circuit courtroom of appeals stated Cantu’s new proof was “not credible” and “none of it undermines the important incriminating proof towards Cantu”.
On Monday, the Texas board of pardons and paroles voted 7-0 towards commuting Cantu’s dying sentence to a lesser penalty. Members additionally rejected granting a four-month reprieve.
Efforts to delay Cantu’s execution had obtained the help of religion leaders, celebrities similar to Kim Kardashian and the actor Martin Sheen, and the US consultant Joaquín Castro, and his brother, former US housing secretary Julián Castro. And three jurors from Cantu’s trial had additionally requested an execution delay, saying they now had doubts concerning the case.
The Collin county district lawyer, Greg Willis, whose workplace convicted Cantu, stated that proof offered at trial proved Cantu dedicated the killings. “I stay absolutely satisfied that Ivan Cantu brutally murdered two harmless victims in 2000,” Willis stated in a current assertion.
However Bunn had written in Cantu’s clemency software that new proof “impugns the integrity of the State’s case for guilt and raises the specter that the State of Texas may execute an harmless man”.
In Cantu’s house, police discovered bloody denims with the victims’ DNA and a key to the victims’ house. Police discovered Cantu’s gun at his ex-girlfriend’s house. Mosqueda’s blood was discovered on the gun’s barrel whereas Cantu’s fingerprints have been discovered on the gun’s journal.
In a 2005 affidavit, Matthew Goeller, one in all Cantu’s trial attorneys, stated Cantu admitted to him “he had certainly killed Mosqueda for ‘ripping him off’ on a drug deal” and that Kitchen was killed as a result of she was a witness.
Cantu’s then girlfriend, Amy Boettcher, was the prosecution’s predominant witness. Boettcher, who died in 2021, testified that Cantu advised her he was going to kill Mosqueda and Kitchen and later took her again to the crime scene after the killings.
However Bunn alleged that Boettcher’s testimony was riddled with false statements, together with about Cantu stealing Mosqueda’s Rolex watch and Cantu giving her an engagement ring he stole from Kitchen.
Bunn stated new witness statements additionally helped affirm Cantu’s declare {that a} man who had provided medicine to Mosqueda had threatened the cousin two days earlier than the killings.
Bunn credited an impartial investigation by Matt Duff, a personal investigator, with uncovering a lot of the brand new proof. Duff has chronicled his findings in a podcast referred to as Cousins by Blood.
Willis’s workplace has stated in courtroom paperwork: “Amy Boettcher testified honestly.”
Of the brand new proof offered by Cantu, Willis’s workplace had stated, “none of it destroys the cornerstones of the State’s case.”
The following execution in Texas, which has been the nation’s busiest capital punishment state, isn’t scheduled till 26 June. One inmate, James Harris Jr, had been scheduled for execution on 13 March. However the Texas courtroom of legal appeals final week issued a keep in his case.
