DOCSLIB.ORG

The Following Article Appeared in the Guardian (UK) on March 1, 2010

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Following Article Appeared in the Guardian (UK) on March 1, 2010 Professor Dow is mentioned in an article from The Guardian (UK) regarding death row inmate Linda Carty. The following article appeared in The Guardian (UK) on March 1, 2010. Death row: the last hope Linda Carty, a British citizen, has spent eight years on death row in Texas. Her supporters claim that she is innocent – and that one final appeal is all that can save her from lethal injection in the county with the highest execution rate in the US By Alex Hannaford It was an unseasonably cold day in May 2002 when Charlie Mathis walked into the Houston courtroom. He had been called as a -witness for the prosecution, which he found puzzling: he had, after all, spent the last few years working with the woman now sitting in the dock, and felt sure she wasn't -physically capable of committing murder – the crime -before the court. In fact, if anything, he had expected to appear for the defence, but Mathis says that as he walked past the woman's -lawyers, one of them turned to him and commented glibly: "Oh, I guess I should have talked to you some time, shouldn't I?" It was an early sign that Linda Carty, the woman in the dock, had a difficult road ahead. A British passport holder from the Caribbean island of St Kitts, Carty is now 51 and has spent almost eight years on death row in Texas, accused of abducting and killing a woman in order to steal her baby and pass it off as her own. In the early morning of 16 May 2001, four men broke into a flat in the apartment complex where Carty lived, demanding drugs and money from the people inside. Joana Rodriguez, who lived there with her husband and -infant son, was later found suffocated in the boot of a car that belonged to Carty's daughter, her arms and legs bound with duct tape, and a plastic bag placed over her head. Her baby was found alive in another car later the same day. Three of the men – Chris -Robinson, Gerald Anderson, Carliss Williams (the fourth has never been identified) – told police that Carty had planned the entire thing and that she told them if they broke into the -apartment and kidnapped Rodriguez and her son, they would find 200lb of marijuana and cash inside. In return for testifying against Carty, the three men were each -promised lesser sentences. During the police -investigation, a tenant in the same complex told detectives she had seen Carty the previous evening -sitting in a car in the parking lot and that she had told her she was pregnant and that the baby was going to be born the next day. Carty blames her conviction on her trial lawyer, whom she says was -woefully inept. She also believes that she was framed by people she met in her work as an undercover informant for the Drug Enforcement -Administration, a job that involved befriending -criminals and passing on information to handlers such as -Mathis. She says Robinson, Anderson and Williams must have been hired to carry out the task. Last autumn, an appeal court -rejected Carty's claim that her trial in 2002 was unfair. This means that the supreme court, and a rare last-minute reprieve from the board of paroles and pardons, is all that stands between her and the ultimate punishment: execution by lethal injection. This could come as early as this summer. The British government seems to be rallying behind Carty: last year it filed an amicus brief (a legal document registering the concerns of a third party over the court's -decision) at the 5th circuit court of appeals. On -Friday, the human rights group -Reprieve announced at a press -conference that the government is filing another brief – this time to the US supreme court. In addition, the UK solicitor general, Vera Baird, plans to fly to Texas to increase British -involvement in the case. But time is fast -running out. Although the number of executions in the US has declined over the last five years, the percentage carried out by Texas has increased. Since the mid-70s, Texas has been responsible for more than a third of all US -executions; -between 2002 and 2006 it was -responsible for 40%, and last year it -accounted for 50%, including two -foreign nationals. Kristin Houle, head of the Texas -Coalition Against the Death Penalty, told me Harris County (where Carty had her trial) has sent 104 people to their death – more than any other state in the US, let alone county. "Death -penalties peaked around the time Linda was convicted and sentenced – there were 40 new death sentences in Texas that year, 11 of them in Harris County. But in 2008 and 2009 there were no new death sentences in Harris County at all. The big question is, would Linda have been sentenced to death if her trial was today? It's doubtful." At the Mountain View Unit, a -maximum-security state prison in Gatesville, Texas, Carty remains -upbeat and still hopes that she will be exonerated. She is investing all her emotional energy in an appeal her lawyers are making, and she wants the state of Texas to release fingerprint and DNA evidence that she says might prove she wasn't responsible. "I'm not going to let anyone kill me knowing that we should have done x, y, z and it wasn't done," Carty says from behind bullet-proof perspex. Carty's fingerprints were found in both her daughter's Chevrolet Cavalier, in which Rodriguez's body was found, and a Pontiac Sunfire, rented in her daughter's name and in which police found the kidnapped boy. But Carty says no fingerprints or DNA evidence were ever taken from the duct tape or plastic bag wrapped around the victim – or at least that if it was, it has never been released. "There was nothing that linked me to the case except hearsay. I wouldn't put anything past these people [Robinson, Anderson and Williams] and they know I didn't know anything about it. Our paths had never crossed until that day. If the DNA on the body itself isn't mine, then whose is it? It was never tested. Houston's crime lab has done such shoddy work – they've got such incompetent people in there." (She has a point. An audit of Houston's crime lab in 2002 found that DNA -technicians misinterpreted data, were poorly trained, and kept slipshod records.) Carty's current appeal hinges on something known as the Strickland Standard. This essentially rules that a defence counsel must be an -"effective advocate of their client's position", and Carty's current lawyers say that her original trial attorney, Jerry Guerinot, was far from effective. In fact, out of around 40 of Guerinot's clients charged with capital murder, 20 were -sentenced to death. Clive Stafford-Smith, founder and -director of -Reprieve, says: "Jerry Guerinot has, in my -opinion, the worst record of any capital defence lawyer in America. He has had more clients sentenced to death than most states have prisoners on death row . He's shockingly bad." Guerinot didn't return a call asking for comment. Back in her native St Kitts, Carty taught children from low-income families in the hope they could have a better lot in life. She was active in her local church and had political aspirations too – she was heavily involved with the People's Action Movement, a party founded on a platform of anti-corruption and opposition to unfair taxes. Carty and her family emigrated to the US in 1982 and she went on to study pharmacology at the University of Houston. It was while she was a student there that she was recruited as an undercover informant by the DEA and asked to befriend suspected drug traffickers, usually of Caribbean origin, and pass information to Mathis, who says that Carty risked her life for him on several occasions. This background would, her current lawyers insist, have been crucial in helping convince the jury of her good character at her -original trial. According to the prosecution, Carty started living with her boyfriend, Jose Corona, three years before the murder, and although she had a grown-up daughter, Jovelle Joubert, she told -Corona three times that she was expecting another child, and then later that she had miscarried on each occasion. Two weeks before the murder, according to the prosecution, Corona threatened to leave Carty because she kept lying about being pregnant but she pleaded with him to stay, insisting she was going to have a baby boy on 16 May – the day Rodriguez was murdered. The prosecution claimed that Carty could no longer conceive and planned to cut the baby out of Rodriguez's womb with a pair of scissors and pass it off as her own. The State's lawyers dramatically produced a pair of Carty's scissors in court, which -succeeded in eliciting a strong -response from the jury; they were, in fact, bandage -scissors with rounded ends – -incapable of cutting through skin and muscle -tissue. In any case, Rodriguez had given birth three days before the murder. Stafford-Smith says Carty has been in abusive relationships. "She is a battered woman and she was raped when she was younger," he says. "The -prosecution argued that she -desperately wanted a child to maintain the relationship she was in. But that's a small fact that you invariably build a bigger story on. "The prosecution came up with a -motive that she wanted to steal this woman's child because she wasn't -having her own child.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Texas Death Penalty Developments in 2016: the Year in Review
    EMBARGOED UNTIL THURSDAY, DECEMBER 15, 2016, 12:01 AM CDT Texas Death Penalty Developments in 2016: The Year in Review Executive Summary The Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (TCADP) – a statewide advocacy organization based in Austin, Texas – publishes this annual report to inform citizens and elected officials about issues associated with the death penalty during the past year. The report cites these recent death penalty developments in Texas: • In 2016, new death sentences remained at their lowest level since the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the state’s revised capital punishment statute in 1976. Jurors condemned three individuals to death, but rejected the death penalty in a fourth case. • Application of the death penalty remains racially biased. Over the last five years, 80% of death sentences have been imposed on people of color. • Use of the death penalty also remains geographically isolated. Just seven counties account for approximately two-thirds of all new death sentences in Texas since 2012. • For the second consecutive year, there were no new death sentences in Harris or Dallas Counties. • The State of Texas put seven people to death in 2016, the lowest number of executions in two decades. Texas accounted for more than one-third of all U.S. executions. • Of the seven men put to death by the State of Texas in 2016, two were Hispanic and five were white. It was the first time since 1984, and only the second year since the resumption of executions in 1982, that no African-Americans were executed in Texas. • Nearly half of the individuals executed by the State of Texas over the last two years had a significant impairment.
    [Show full text]
  • Linda Carty Was Convicted and Sentenced to Die by Lethal Injection for the 2001 Murder of Joana Rodriguez
    Linda Carty was convicted and sentenced to die by lethal injection for the 2001 murder of Joana Rodriguez. The crime took place on 16 May 2001, when three men broke into the apartment of Rodriguez and her partner Raymundo Cabrera, demanding drugs and cash. They abducted Rodriguez and her four-day-old son, Ray, who was later found unharmed in a car, while Rodriguez had suffocated. The perpetrators saved their own lives by laying the blame on Linda. Linda was forced to rely on a local court-appointed lawyer, Jerry Guerinot, whose incompetence has already led to 20 of his clients ending up on death row, more than any other defence lawyer in the US. Guerinot's catalogue of serious failings in Linda's case includes: Failure to spot obvious flaws and inconsistencies in the prosecution case; Failure to meet Linda until immediately before the trial; Failure to interview witnesses; and failure to investigate key mitigating evidence; Failure to inform Linda of her right to consular assistance; and Failure to inform Linda’s common law husband of his right to spousal privilege Failure to spot obvious flaws and inconsistencies in the prosecution case The prosecution’s rather implausible theory was that Linda was afraid of losing her common- law husband and thought that if she had another baby he would stay. Unable to get pregnant, they allege she had hired three men to kidnap Rodriguez and that she planned to steal the child - a baby of a different race to Linda. The prosecution alleged that Linda had recently purchased ‘surgical scissors’ and was planning to cut the baby from the victim’s stomach.
    [Show full text]
  • Texas Death Penalty Developments in 2016: the Year in Review
    Texas Death Penalty Developments in 2016: The Year in Review Executive Summary The Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (TCADP) – a statewide advocacy organization based in Austin, Texas – publishes this annual report to inform citizens and elected officials about issues associated with the death penalty in the past year. The report cites these recent death penalty developments in Texas: • In 2016, new death sentences remained at their lowest level since the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the state’s revised capital punishment statute in 1976. Jurors condemned three individuals to death, but rejected the death penalty in a fourth case. • Application of the death penalty remains racially biased. Over the last five years, 80% of death sentences have been imposed on people of color. • Use of the death penalty also remains geographically isolated. Just seven counties account for approximately two-thirds of all new death sentences in Texas since 2012. • For the second consecutive year, there were no new death sentences in Harris or Dallas Counties. • The State of Texas put seven people to death in 2016, the lowest number of executions in two decades. Texas accounted for more than one-third of all U.S. executions. • Of the seven men put to death by the State of Texas in 2016, two were Hispanic and five were white. It was the first time since 1984, and only the second year since the resumption of executions in 1982, that no African-Americans were executed in Texas. • Nearly half of the individuals executed by the State of Texas over the last two years had a significant impairment.
    [Show full text]
  • Documents E/CN.4/L.142 and E/CN.4/SR.323, and BOSSUYT 296
    No. 18-50 ================================================================ In The Supreme Court of the United States --------------------------------- --------------------------------- LINDA ANITA CARTY, Petitioner, v. THE STATE OF TEXAS, Respondent. --------------------------------- --------------------------------- On Petition For Writ Of Certiorari To The Court Of Criminal Appeals Of Texas --------------------------------- --------------------------------- BRIEF OF THE UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND NORTHERN IRELAND AS AMICUS CURIAE IN SUPPORT OF PETITIONER LINDA ANITA CARTY --------------------------------- --------------------------------- MR. STANLEY G. SCHNEIDER* MS. ISHAANI SHRIVASTAVA SCHNEIDER & MCKINNEY P.C. Barrister, 440 Louisiana, Suite 800 Devereux Chambers Houston, Texas 77002 London WC2R 3JH Office: (713) 951-9994 United Kingdom [email protected] PROFESSOR JON YORKE Professor of Human Rights and Director of the Centre for Human Rights BIRMINGHAM CITY UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW The Curzon Building, 4 Cardigan Street Birmingham B4 7BD United Kingdom *Counsel of Record, Member of the Bar of this Court Counsel for Amicus Curiae ================================================================ COCKLE LEGAL BRIEFS (800) 225-6964 WWW.COCKLELEGALBRIEFS.COM i CAPITAL CASE QUESTIONS PRESENTED The Petitioner has presented the following questions: (1) Whether the Constitution requires a court on habeas review in a capital punishment case to assess cumulatively the prejudice caused by multiple constitutional errors at a criminal
    [Show full text]
  • APPENDIX 1A APPENDIX a in the COURT of CRIMINAL APPEALS of TEXAS ———— No
    APPENDIX 1a APPENDIX A IN THE COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEALS OF TEXAS ———— No. WR-61,055-02 ———— EX PARTE LINDA CARTY, APPLICANT ———— ON APPLICATION FOR A WRIT OF HABEAS CORPUS CAUSE NO. 877592 IN THE 177TH JUDICIAL DISTRICT COURT FROM HARRIS COUNTY ———— (February 7, 2018) ———— Per curiam. RICHARDSON, J., filed a concurring opinion in which HERVEY and WALKER, JJ., joined. WALKER, J., filed a concurring opinion in which HERVEY, J., joined. ALCALA, J., concurred. NEWELL, J., did not participate. ORDER This is a subsequent application for writ of habeas corpus filed pursuant to the provisions of Texas Code of Criminal Procedure Article 11.071, § 5. Applicant was convicted of murdering Joana Rodriguez in the course of kidnapping her. Prior to the instant offense, Rodriguez was pregnant and was living in the same apartment complex where Applicant resided. Applicant told people that she wanted Rodriguez’s baby and that she was going to “cut the baby out” of her. 2a Applicant recruited a group of men to break into Rodriguez’s apartment to commit robbery and kidnap Rodriguez. These men included Christopher Robinson, Gerald Anderson, and Carliss Williams. A fourth man, Marvin Caston, was involved in their discussions but did not participate in the home invasion. Robinson, Anderson, and Williams kicked in the door of Rodriguez’s apartment after midnight on May 16, 2001, while Applicant waited outside. When the men entered the apartment, they became aware that Rodriguez had already given birth to a baby boy. They beat and bound Rodriguez’s husband and another male relative. Rodriguez was brought outside and placed in a car trunk, and Applicant took the baby.
    [Show full text]
  • Unrequited Innocence in US Capital Cases
    Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy Volume 14 Article 4 Issue 3 Spring Spring 2019 Unrequited Innocence in U.S. Capital Cases: Unintended Consequences of the Fourth Kind Rob Warden John Seasly Recommended Citation Rob Warden and John Seasly, Unrequited Innocence in U.S. Capital Cases: Unintended Consequences of the Fourth Kind, 14 Nw. J. L. & Soc. Pol'y. 375 (2019). https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/njlsp/vol14/iss3/4 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Northwestern Pritzker School of Law Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy by an authorized editor of Northwestern Pritzker School of Law Scholarly Commons. Copyright 2019 by Rob Warden and John Seasly Volume 14 (Spring 2019) Northwestern Journal of Law and Social Policy Unrequited Innocence in U.S. Capital Cases: Unintended Consequences of the Fourth Kind Rob Warden* John Seasly** INTRODUCTION Nineteen years ago, a New Yorker cartoon depicted a judge proclaiming, “Innocence is no excuse.”1 As humorous as it may have been, only a sadist could find anything amusing about the extent to which the cartoon reflected, and continues to reflect, the reality of U.S. criminal justice in general and capital punishment in particular. For most of the nation’s history, innocence was barely a footnote in the dominant narrative of criminal justice—exemplified by the distinguished liberal jurist Learned Hand’s assertion in 1923 that: Our procedure has been always haunted by the ghost of the innocent man convicted. It is an unreal dream. What we need to fear is the archaic formalism and the watery sentiment that obstructs, delays, and defeats the prosecution of crime.2 Since the advent and advance of DNA forensic technology in the late twentieth century,3 the “unreal dream” has given way to a nightmare of unintended consequences— of which the most thoroughly documented is false convictions.4 As of June 2019, 161 prisoners sentenced to death under laws enacted after the U.S.
    [Show full text]
  • Texas Death Penalty Developments in 2015: the Year in Review
    Texas Death Penalty Developments in 2015: The Year in Review The Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (TCADP) publishes this annual report to inform citizens and elected officials about issues associated with the death penalty in Texas during the past year. It presents information on new death sentences, executions, and stays; reduced sentences; wrongful convictions; judicial and legislative developments; and other issues affecting the administration of justice in Texas. Death Sentences New Death Sentences This year, new death sentences fell to their lowest number since the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Texas’ revised capital punishment statute in 1976. Juries condemned three new individuals to death, according to data compiled from media outlets and the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ). Death sentences peaked in 1999, when juries sent 48 people to death row. New death sentences in Texas 60 40 48 37 20 34 26 28 24 14 14 0 11 12 9 8 8 9 9 11 3 The first death sentence of the year was not imposed until October 7, representing 9 months and 17 days since the previous death sentence was imposed in Texas.1 Death Sentences by County An analysis of data from 2011 to 2015 reveals that only 20 Texas counties have imposed death sentences in the last 5 years; of these, only 11 counties have done so in the last 2 years.2 In 2015, just three counties (Bexar, Brazos, and Smith) accounted for new death sentences: • On October 7, after more than seven hours of deliberation, jurors in Brazos County sentenced Gabriel Hall to death for murdering Edwin Sharr and attacking Linda Sharr in their home in College Station in 2011.
    [Show full text]
  • Adequate Representation: the Difference Between Life and Death
    NOTES ADEQUATE REPRESENTATION: THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LIFE AND DEATH R. Rosie Gorn* INTRODUCTION The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2017 ruling in Buck v. Davis highlights the disturbing consequences of deficient representation in capital cases.1 Duane Edward Buck was sentenced to death in 1997 after the defense’s own witness testified that “[t]here is an overrepresentation of Blacks among the violent offenders” and the defendant’s race made him more likely to be dangerous in the future.2 During closing argument, defense counsel failed to object to the State’s reference to this testimony. This improper evidence of race was the only evidence presented on which the jury could base a finding of “future dangerousness”—a necessary finding to sentence a defendant to death, as opposed to life in prison. The jury sentenced Buck to death based on this improper evidence. Thus, in Buck, the Supreme Court found ineffective assistance of counsel, holding that Buck’s trial counsel performed deficiently and that Buck was prejudiced by that deficiency.3 Buck v. Davis, one of today’s clearest violations of a defendant’s constitutional right to a fair trial, went un-reviewed on the merits through countless appeals over the course of twenty-one years and had yet to be rectified when it reached the Supreme Court. Even after the State of Texas recognized a deficiency in Buck’s case, procedural roadblocks continued to deny Buck relief.4 Perhaps most concern­ * R. Rosie Gorn holds a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center. The author would like to thank the American Criminal Law Review editors and staff.
    [Show full text]