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Freedom’s Just Another Word
Jesus Cantu — the Fort Worth businessman who is fighting a drug conviction on the grounds that his judge failed to take a constitutionally required oath of office — has been released from state prison but has yet to take a single breath as a free man. Having served his time, Cantu, 45, was released from state custody the same week that Fort Worth Weekly carried a story about his case (“So Help Me God,” March 27, 2003). However, “reforms” of the nation’s immigration laws passed in 1996 require that immigrants convicted of serious crimes be deported after serving their sentences. La migra snatched Cantu as he stepped out of state prison and put him in federal lockup to await deportation. His wife hired a lawyer, who has won a delay but not Cantu’s freedom. He has been shuttled through at least four immigration holding facilities — and there’s no telling when, or if, he will be released. Static hears that the League of United Latin American Citizens, whose local chapter has supported Cantu’s fight, will ask delegates to take a stand on the issue of un-sworn judges, at the group’s state convention in Fort Worth this week.
Different Stories
Amy Bush is the Arlington woman who is seeking visitation rights with her three daughters, after serving a year in prison for criminally negligent homicide in the death of a fourth daughter, Maranda. (“Unwelcome Visitor,” April 3, 2003). Before she and her husband went to prison — he for murdering Maranda — Amy and Johnny Bush had blamed Maranda’s injuries and then her death on the eldest of their surviving daughters, Amanda, then a toddler. Amanda, now 16, and her sisters are appealing a judge’s order that they go every other week to see Amy at Child Protective Services offices.
In a Fort Worth Star-Telegram story, Amy Bush said that she entered the guilty plea because she felt some responsibility in her baby’s death.
That’s not what she told the Weekly in April, or in letters to her husband in 1992 and 1996. She told the Weekly she “did nothing wrong personally” and took the plea to avoid a long prison sentence. She wrote to her husband that if she had not pleaded guilty, “Amanda’s testimony alone would have convicted us both. ... Johnny Baby, they would have hanged me with you.”
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