Texas Executes Man After 2 Decades Of Innocence Claims On Death Row

A 50-year-old man on Texas’ death row who has maintained his innocence for more than two decades was executedon Wednesday, according to multiple reports.

Ivan Cantu, who was convicted and sentenced to death by a jury in the 2000 killing of his cousin and the cousin’s fiancée,was killed by lethal injection at 6:47 p.m. local time, according to CNN. He repeatedly stated his innocence in his final words.

“I don’t think that this situation here will bring you closure, if it does. If this is what it takes or have any reservations off in your mind, then so be it,” Cantu said.

Discrepancies in a key piece of testimony, the recanting of other testimony and apprehension from two jurors have cast doubt on his conviction.

“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, according to NBC News earlier this month. Both news outlets are owned by NBCUniversal.

After being scheduled for an April 2023 execution, Cantu’s death was put on hold by a judge who allowed Cantu and his legal team time to prove that the testimony and evidence his conviction was based on were unreliable. Cantu was also previously scheduled for an execution in 2012.

Cantu has argued that his cousin, 27-year-old James Mosqueda, was a drug dealer indebted to a rival drug dealer who killed Mosqueda and his fiancée, Amy Kitchen.

Cantu’s former girlfriend, Amy Boettcher, and her brother, Jeff Boettcher, both testified against him during the trial.

According to a petition filed by Cantu’s attorney last year, Amy Boettcher, who died in 2021, testified that Cantu killed Mosqueda and Kitchen, took her to the crime scene, then