On the same day that Idaho abandoned its intention to execute Thomas Creech, a serial killer whose executioners could not find the vein to administer lethal injection, Texas killed Iván Cantú, a man accused of the death in Dallas in 2000 of his cousin, James Mosqueda, and his girlfriend, Amy Kitchen.
The last words of Cantú, who died by the method of lethal injection in the prison where Texas keeps prisoners on death row in Huntsville, a town dedicated to the business of mass incarceration, were to defend his innocence, in which he has insisted since his arrest. “I would like to address the Kitchen and Mosqueda families. “I want you to know that I never killed James and Amy,” he said. The 50-year-old inmate expired at 6:47 p.m., 21 minutes after receiving the deadly dose of pentobarbital, according to Texas prison authorities.
Creech’s execution, meanwhile, was set to be the first in 12 years in Idaho. The director of the State Department of Corrections, Josh Tewalt, certified the impossibility of carrying it out around 11:00, approximately an hour after when it was scheduled. Tewalt explained that the medical team was unable to find a valid “intravenous line.” Jailers returned him to his cell, the death sentence expired, and the State announced that it would reflect on “next steps to take” with Creech.
Lethal injection is, according to experts, the most unsuccessful method of execution, which has led Alabama to try nitrogen asphyxiation. The firing squad has returned for this same reason to some territories: Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Utah now consider it among their options.
At 73, Creech is the longest-serving inmate on Idaho’s death row. He was sentenced to death for the 1981 murder of another inmate, David Dale Jensen. At that time, he had already accumulated four life sentences for as many murders. They later awarded him six more and he pleaded guilty to having killed “more than 40 people,” according to a statement from the prosecutor’s office. The last victim to add to his credit came last January, when the San Bernardino (California) police announced the resolution of a case open for half a century; Investigators determined that Creech was responsible for the death of a young man named Daniel Walker.
This Wednesday, the Washington Supreme Court dismissed the inmate’s last-minute appeal. Executions are a rare affair in Idaho. Since 1976, only three have been completed, according to official data.
The same cannot be said of Texas, the State that has killed the most prisoners: 587 since 1982, when executions resumed, after a Supreme Court ruling in 1976 reinstated capital punishment in the United States after a four-year hiatus.
According to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center, at least 196 people sentenced to death in the United States since 1973 have been exonerated, 16 of them in Texas.
Cantú insisted on his innocence until the end, and in his crusade he had the support of celebrities such as Kim Kardashian, Jane Fonda and Martin Sheen. His execution was attended by three journalists, Kitchen’s brother, his sister-in-law and a family friend. The condemned man was accompanied by his spiritual advisor, Sister Helen Prejean, perhaps the most famous activist against capital punishment in the United States, played by Susan Sarandon in the film Death penalty (1995).
“We took on this man’s case because of the flaws that were made in his trial,” Prejean declared after the execution. “By acting together for Ivan, we want to tilt the pendulum towards the side of justice and put us one step closer to ending the death penalty.” [en Estados Unidos]”.
Cantú’s lawyers unsuccessfully sought a stay of execution to buy time for the examination of new evidence. His defenders maintain that the trial in which he was convicted was full of irregularities and that the person responsible for the two deaths is free. They also talk about the alleged false testimony of several of the witnesses presented by the Prosecutor’s Office, one of whom recanted. They also claim that the true motivation of the murderers was the debts incurred by Mosqueda, who, according to Cantú, earned his living as a drug trafficker.
This same week, Collin County District Attorney Greg Willis reiterated in a statement his belief that the convicted man was guilty “without a doubt possible.” “Justice has finally been done,” Willis said Wednesday. “My prayers go to the families, friends and loved ones of the victims so that they can enjoy the long-awaited peace of spirit after so many years.”
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