A prisoner in the Huntsville, Tex., state penitentiary was executed Wednesday for a double-murder that he long denied committing.
Ivan Cantu, 50, received a lethal injection more than two decades after he was convicted of fatally shooting his cousin, James Mosqueda, and his cousin’s girlfriend, Amy Kitchen.
“I’d like to address the Kitchens and Mosqueda families. I want you to know that I never killed James and Amy,” the inmate said in his final statement, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
“And if I did, if I knew who did, you would’ve been the first to know any information I would’ve had that would’ve helped to bring justice to James and Amy,” he added.
Cantu has long claimed that he was convicted on false testimony and questionable evidence, saying he was framed by men who were really responsible for the crime.
In 2001, prosecutors argued that Cantu killed Mosqueda, a 27-year-old drug dealer, and Kitchen, 22, as he tried to steal cocaine, marijuana and cash from Mosqueda’s home in Dallas.
The inmate claimed that the killings were truly carried out by a rival drug dealer who was angry over a monetary dispute.
Despite petitioning two lower courts to stay his execution, both dismissed the request on Tuesday, with one arguing that new evidence presented was “not credible,” and the other denying the request on procedural grounds without reviewing the evidence.
During the original investigation in 2000, police found bloody jeans with the victims’ DNA in Cantu’s apartment. His gun, which had Mosqueda’s blood on the barrel and Cantu’s fingerprints on its magazine, was found at a different location.
One of Cantu’s trial attorneys later claimed that Cantu admitted to him “he had indeed killed Mosqueda for ‘ripping him off’ on a drug deal.”
Cantu’s then-girlfriend, Amy Boettcher, testified during the trial that Cantu told her he intended to kill Mosqueda and Kitchen and brought her to the crime scene after the murders.
“I remain fully convinced that Ivan Cantu brutally murdered two innocent victims in 2000,” said Collin County District Attorney Greg Willis, whose office was responsible for the conviction in 2001.
With News Wires Services
