Ivan Cantu, a 50-year-old Hispanic man, is scheduled to be executed in Texas on February 28, 2024. He was convicted and sentenced to death in 2001 for a double murder in November 2000. A recent independent investigation conducted has compounded questions about the adequacy of his legal representation at trial and raised doubts about the testimony of the state’s key witness and the physical evidence that appeared to corroborate her testimony. International safeguards prohibit the imposition of the death penalty on anyone whose conviction is not based on “clear and convincing evidence leaving no room for an alternative explanation of the facts”.
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contact information:
Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles
P.O. Box 13401
Austin Texas 78711-3401, USA
Email: [email protected]
sample letter:
Dear Board Member,
I am writing to request that Governor Abbott commute the death sentence of Ivan Cantu (TDCJ #999399) who has an execution date of February 28, 2024. Ivan Cantu has been on death row for over two decades. He did not receive effective legal representation at trial and has consistently maintained his innocence of the two murders of which he was convicted.
An independent investigation over the past four years has uncovered evidence not heard by the jury which compounds concern about the effectiveness of Ivan Cantu’s trial counsel and raises doubts about the reliability of his conviction. Two of the trial jurors signed affidavits expressing the wish to have a court consider the new evidence. One juror said the state’s key witness testimony appears to have been “false or misleading in many significant respects, which leads me to question the truthfulness of her testimony as a whole”. The second juror said he was “dismayed” to learn that the investigation had thrown into doubt “much of the testimony and evidence which I and the other jurors relied upon at the time of trial. I am now concerned that the State may be wrongfully putting a man to death based on my verdict”. Without a court examining the merits of this new evidence, executive clemency remains the only route for remedy.
Please recommend to Governor Abbott that he commute Ivan Cantu’s death sentence.
Yours sincerely,
[YOUR NAME]
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