Final February, Kim Kardashian shared a photograph of Ivan Cantu on social media, saying he was a dying row inmate and that state of Texas would execute him in two days. Neither had been true.
The Cantu shared within the picture is a resident of Westchester, N.Y., and has not been sentenced to dying for double homicide.
He’s, nonetheless, very offended in regards to the mix-up and suing the star for defamation, in line with an unfiled civil criticism submitted to Los Angeles Superior Courtroom on Thursday. Within the criticism, Cantu lambastes Kardashian for sharing an unauthorized picture of his face along with her greater than 350 million Instagram followers, saying the incident has triggered him extreme psychological and emotional trauma.
Cantu has the identical title because the Texas dying row inmate who was put to dying with a deadly injection two days after Kardashian’s put up.
The late Cantu was convicted of the murders of his cousin and his cousin’s fiancée in 2000. He insisted upon his innocence till his dying.
Texas dying row inmate Ivan Cantu was put to dying by deadly injection on Feb. 28, 2024.
(Texas Division of Felony Justice )
Kardashian’s lawyer Michael Rhodes defended the put up as “a easy mistake of utilizing the general public picture of one other man with the identical title to advertise Kim’s longstanding dedication to the reason for felony justice reform.”
The Instagram put up accommodates a photograph of the wrong Cantu and a hyperlink to a petition demanding the Collin County district legal professional withdraw the execution date.
“The picture was taken down virtually instantly as soon as the error was found,” Rhodes mentioned in an announcement to The Occasions. “We’d want to unravel this with out litigation, however in fact will defend Kim as wanted.”
Cantu says that though the put up was eliminated, it nonetheless triggered extreme harm to his popularity and uncovered him to hate and contempt by falsely figuring out him as a double assassin.
“Cantu suffered critical emotional harm and harm within the type of emotional and psychological anguish, psychological hurt, embarrassment, anxiousness, lack of sleep, nightmares, post-traumatic stress, complications, want for medical care and emotional counseling,” the criticism states.
He’s suing Kardashian for libel, slander, intentional infliction of emotional misery, invasion of privateness, negligence and representing him in false gentle. He’s looking for compensatory and punitive damages in an quantity to be decided in courtroom.
“Kardashian printed and disseminated false data with out privilege or authorization, and her acts had been intentional, negligent, reckless and/or violated requirements of ethics and decency,” the criticism states.
Kardashian, who’s finding out to develop into a lawyer, started her activism in felony justice round 2017 when she discovered in regards to the case of Alice Marie Johnson, who was serving a life sentence for a nonviolent drug offense. In 2018, the celbrity efficiently lobbied then-President Trump to grant Johnson clemency.
She has since continued to advocate on inmates’ behalf, together with for the Menendez brothers, who she believes ought to be resentenced and launched.
