A Texas man on death row says his execution this month would be 'for a crime I didn't commit'

WEST LIVINGSTON, Texas ― Ivan Cantu is aware that he’s running out of time. He clings to the black phone receiver at the prison and fights to make himself heard before a world that 24 years ago sentenced him to death for two murders that, he claims, he didn’t commit.

“From the first day — everything was there to investigate the case and prove my innocence. But when I explained it, they didn’t believe me,” Cantu said in an interview with Noticias Telemundo at the Allan B. Polunsky Unit prison in West Livingston, about 80 miles north of Houston. The prison houses 2,937 prisoners and at least 180 of them, like Cantu, are awaiting execution.

Cantu, who was born in Dallas 50 years ago, was sentenced to death in October 2001. After two postponements in 2012 and 2023, his execution by lethal injection is scheduled for Feb. 28 barring a last-minute appeal.

“I often think about that because I don’t want to die,” he said, “it’s just days before they want to put me on a stretcher [to receive a lethal injection] for a crime I didn’t commit — we’re doing our best to present the information to the courts, but it’s like they don’t care.”

Cantu was found guilty by a jury of the murder of his cousin, James Mosqueda, 27, and Amy Kitchen, Mosqueda’s 22-year-old fiancée. Both were shot to death in north Dallas on Nov. 3, 2000, the sentencing determined. Cantu was 28 years old at the time.

The jury ruled unanimously in 2001 that the accusation against him was irrefutable and he was sentenced to die by lethal injection.

In the years since his conviction, Cantu’s attorney, Gena Bunn, who has represented him pro bono for 15 years, private investigators and an independent podcast producer have said they’ve found evidence that they believe