Convicted murderer Ivan Cantu executed in Texas

HUNTSVILLE – Convicted murderer Ivan Cantu has been executed in Huntsville. He was pronounced dead at 6:47 p.m.

Cantu was convicted of murdering two people in Collin County in 2000 despite a lot of influential voices claiming he was not guilty.

A rally outside the Collin County courthouse last year was the beginning of a high-profile campaign with several prominent voices claiming Cantu was wrongly convicted of killing his cousin, James Mosqueda, and the victim’s fiancée, Amy Kitchen, in 2000.   

Cantu supporters claimed attorneys defended him poorly during his trial.  But court documents obtained by CBS News Texas reveal that Cantu confessed to his attorneys before the trial that he had committed the murders. Those attorneys filed an affidavit when they were later accused by Cantu of not allowing him to undergo a psych evaluation before trial. 

The attorneys said it was based on the fact that he had admitted to them that he killed Mosqueda and Kitchen out of revenge because Mosqueda owed him drug money. That led them to believe that a state-sponsored psychiatric evaluation could indicate that Cantu was a sociopath, which they believed “would substantially lower [their] already slim chance for [a reduction to] a life sentence.”

In a statement to CBS News Texas on Tuesday, Collin County DA Greg Willis said, “I remain fully convinced that Ivan Cantu brutally murdered two innocent victims in 2000.”