Death-row inmate Linda Carty

Linda Carty

Why a Court Appointed Attorney May not be your best choice. British grandmother facing execution

Death-row inmate Linda Carty launches last-chance appeal to US Supreme Court

Giles Whittell in Washington

A British grandmother who once sang for the Prince of Wales faces death by lethal injection within months unless a final appeal launched yesterday can persuade the US Supreme Court that she deserves a second trial. Linda Carty, a rape victim who says she was framed for murder by career criminals, has been on death row in central Texas since 2002. Her hopes of clemency depend on the Supreme Court accepting her case, and with it 80 bound briefing documents submitted by British campaigners and government lawyers. If it does not, she will almost certainly become the first black British woman to be executed in more than a century.

Carty was born in St Kitts, whose Prime Minister has described her as “a star who could have entered politics”. She now spends 23 hours a day in a cell in Gatesville, Texas, condemned to death after a trial described yesterday as “catastrophically flawed”, for a murder of which she has always proclaimed her innocence. A “friend of the court” briefing by the British Government and delivered to the Supreme Court on Thursday, contends that Carty deserves a retrial because Texan authorities and her court-appointed lawyer failed to inform British officials of her arrest, as they were required to do by consular treaty. In another briefing submitted yesterday by a British documentary film-maker, Carty’s new lawyer — from a firm with close ties to both the former presidents Bush — is quoted as saying he will not be able to sleep at night “knowing that she could be killed without having had the chance of a fair trial”.

 

Linda Carty speaks

 

Linda Carty talks from death row about her faith

 

Say No To Deathrow

Frances Newton

Frances Elaine Newton (April 12, 1965 – September 14, 2005) was a woman who was executed by lethal injection in the state of Texas for the April 7, 1987 murder of her husband, Adrian, 23, her son, Alton, 7, and daughter, Farrah, 21 months. All three victims were shot with a .25 caliber pistol which belonged to a man Newton had been seeing. Newton claimed that an illegal drug trade/drug dealer killed the three. The Houston police presented evidence that Newton's husband was a drug dealer and was in debt to his supplier. Newton maintained her innocence from her first interrogation in 1987 until her execution in 2005. However, three weeks before the slayings, Newton had purchased life insurance policies on her husband, her daughter, and herself. These were each worth $50,000. She named herself as beneficiary on her husband's and daughter's policies. Newton claimed she forged her husband's signature to prevent him from discovering that money had been set aside to pay the premiums. Newton was also found to have placed a paper bag containing the murder weapon in a relative's home shortly after the murders. Prosecutors cited these facts as the basis for her motive. Two hours before her first scheduled execution on December 1, 2004, Texas Governor Rick Perry granted a 120-day reprieve to allow more time to test forensic evidence in the case. There were also conflicting reports as to whether a second gun was recovered from the scene; ballistics reports appeared to demonstrate that a gun recovered by law enforcement and allegedly connected to Newton after the offense was the murder weapon. A relative of Newton who was incarcerated shortly after the murders claimed a person he shared a cell with boasted of killing the family. Numerous individuals, including three members of the convicting jury, expressed concern over evidence that was not presented during the trial.