Death Watch: Lies on the Stand and an Execution Delayed

Ivan Cantu, who says he was framed for murder, will not be executed on April 26 as planned. District Judge Benjamin Smith canceled Cantu's execution last Wednesday after an appeal from his attorney, Gena Bunn, which provided new evidence that the prosecution's star witness in the case lied repeatedly on the stand.

Cantu, now 49, was sent to death row in 2001 for the murders of his cousin, James Mosqueda, a drug dealer, and Mosqueda's girlfriend, Amy Kitchen, in Dallas. He was convicted largely on the testimony of his girlfriend at the time of the murders, Amy Boettcher. She testified that Cantu left their apartment on the evening of Nov. 3, 2000, saying he was going to kill Mosqueda, and returned an hour later with blood-spattered clothes and a bruised face. She said Cantu then presented her with an engagement ring and the couple went out and partied until dawn. Hours later they drove to Arkansas to meet Boettcher's parents. While they were away, police discovered the bodies of Mos­queda and Kitchen. They quickly narrowed their investigation to Cantu, with Boettcher's cooperation.

Cantu has long said that he was framed by drug dealers to whom Mosqueda owed money, a contention supported by private investigator Matt Duff. Duff has examined the case in meticulous detail on his podcast Cousins by Blood. He and Bunn have located witnesses who say they saw Cantu on the night of the murders but did not notice bruises on his face. They have testimony from a police officer who searched Cantu's apartment after the crime but did not see the blood-spattered clothing in the trash can where it was later found – raising the possibility that it was planted there later. They say that Mosqueda's Rolex watch – that Boettcher claimed Cantu threw away on the night of the murders – was later found in the home of a family member. And they have witnesses who claim to have seen the engagement ring – the one that Boettcher said Cantu gave her on the night of the murders – a week before Mosqueda and Kitchen's bodies were found.

Bunn believes that Collin County prosecutors coached Boettcher to include these now-suspect details in an effort to strengthen their case against Cantu. "It just looks like the state told her what to say," she said in an interview for Duff's podcast. "They fed her information, information that, as it turned out, was incorrect."

In her appeal, Bunn points out that no evidence contradicting Boetthcher's testimony was presented at the trial and that the proceedings were one-sided. Prosecutors called over two dozen witnesses, including a DNA expert, a ballistics expert, a blood-spatter expert, and a fingerprint expert. Cantu's attorneys did not call a single witness, did not conduct their own investigation of the crime, and simply accepted the prosecution's theory of how it unfolded. At the sentencing portion of the trial, after Cantu had been found guilty, his attorneys conceded his guilt several times, telling the jury on one occasion, "He's not innocent."

Cantu has used his former attorneys' performance to appeal his conviction, saying it was so bad that he deserves a new trial. A succession of courts have denied his request. Now, two jurors who sentenced him to death are also asking that the evidence be reexamined. "I am disturbed by the possibility that false testimony and evidence was presented to me and the other jurors at trial," said Montra Biggs, in an affidavit included with Bunn's appeal. "As a juror who served in this case, I do not want to see Mr. Cantu executed without getting a full hearing on this new information."