British Woman On Death Row Gets Rare Hearing From Texas' Last Resort Court

British Woman On Death Row Gets Rare Hearing From Texas' Last Resort Court
In this April 13, 2010 photo, Linda Carty, 51, who moved from St. Kitts in the British Virgin Islands to the U.S., poses for a photo at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Mountain View Unit outside Gatesville, Texas. Carty, a 51-year-old British grandmother convicted of murdering her 20-year-old neighbor Joana Rodriguez and kidnapping her newborn son, Ray, will soon get a date with the executioner, after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected her last appeal on Monday May 3, 2010 by declining to review her case. It is scary," she told the AP recently from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Mountain View Unit near Gatesville. "You're talking about terminating my life for something I know for myself I didn't do. I'm supposed to be this bad criminal." (AP Photo/Michael Graczyk)
In this April 13, 2010 photo, Linda Carty, 51, who moved from St. Kitts in the British Virgin Islands to the U.S., poses for a photo at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Mountain View Unit outside Gatesville, Texas. Carty, a 51-year-old British grandmother convicted of murdering her 20-year-old neighbor Joana Rodriguez and kidnapping her newborn son, Ray, will soon get a date with the executioner, after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected her last appeal on Monday May 3, 2010 by declining to review her case. It is scary," she told the AP recently from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Mountain View Unit near Gatesville. "You're talking about terminating my life for something I know for myself I didn't do. I'm supposed to be this bad criminal." (AP Photo/Michael Graczyk)

The highest criminal court in Texas has granted a rare hearing to review allegations of prosecutorial misconduct in the high-profile death row case of British national Linda Carty.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals' Wednesday decision is potentially a much-sought break for Carty, 56, who is facing the death penalty for a 2002 capital murder conviction. After new evidence is put before the trial court, it will decide if she will finally get an appeal.

Her three previous attempts at an appeal hearing were unsuccessful.

"My understanding is that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rarely grants a hearing in such matters," Carty's attorney, Michael Goldberg, told The Huffington Post by phone from Russia. “It’s tremendous. It’s unbelievable.”

Lynn Hardaway, a Harris County district attorney, agreed: "It does happen, but very infrequently."

Carty was convicted for the 2001 kidnapping and murder of her neighbor, Joana Rodriguez. Prosecutors claimed Carty was so desperate for a baby to save her common-law marriage that she schemed to steal Rodriguez's newborn son and pass him off as her own. Rodriguez was found dead a day after being abducted; the baby survived the ordeal unharmed.

Affidavits signed in 2014 by the state's star witness, Christopher Robinson, and a retired DEA agent who recruited Carty as an informant allege that Harris County Assistant District Attorney Connie Spence coached, coerced and otherwise threatened witnesses to seal a conviction, according to the Houston Chronicle. Robinson is among four co-defendants who testified against Carty; in doing so, he secured a life sentence without the death penalty.

Carty has maintained her innocence from the start, and her plea has attracted considerable attention from British media, celebrities and U.K.-based supporters. Carty, who was born in St. Kitts, then a British territory, emigrated to the United States and holds dual citizenship.

Assistant District Attorney Roe Wilson, who handles capital appeals for Harris County, previously told the Chronicle the state would launch an investigation if the court agreed Carty's case deserve a closer look.

Hardaway told HuffPost Wednesday the allegations of misconduct are "claims the office takes very seriously. We have been investigating and we will file a response."

She also noted that Carty's lawyers had requested the review hearing based additional counts as well -- including Carty's long-standing claim of innocence -- but the court rejected half of them.

Goldberg said his firm Baker Botts, which has fought pro bono for Carty for nearly ten years, is nonetheless pleased: "The entire Baker Botts team is so happy Linda is finally getting her first real, transparent hearing.”

A date for the hearing has not yet been set.

Before You Go

29 YEARS ON DEATH ROW
South Carolina Department of Corrections
NAME: Edward Lee Elmore
STATE: South Carolina
RELEASED IN 2002

In 1982, Dorothy Edwards of Greenwood, South Carolina, an elderly white woman beloved by her community, was brutally murdered and raped in her home. Edwards' neighbor offered up Elmore, her handyman, as the perpetrator of the crime, even as he maintained his innocence. Elmore was arrested, went to trial 82 days later, and received a death sentence -- a conviction that he received three times as appeal courts overturned each verdict. The case was riddled with bad (even planted) evidence, an incompetent defense, a tainted crime scene, and police coverups. He spent 29 years on death row until his defense argued that he was mentally disabled and legally could not be executed, so he was reduced to a life sentence. In 2002 -- 29 years later -- he pled guilty to murder in exchange for release.

Check out CNN's original series "Death Row Stories" (Sundays 9pm ET/PT) for a deeper look into this case.
25 YEARS ON DEATH ROW
NAME: Krishna Maharaj
STATE: Florida
COMMUTED TO LIFE SENTENCE IN 2002

One-time millionaire and business magnate Kris Maharaj was convicted on two counts of murder in 1987. The case was plagued by covered-up evidence, false eyewitness accounts, and a shoddy defense (who didn't call any of his many witnesses to the stand as a "tactical" maneuver). Clive Stafford Smith has worked on this case for years, and in 2002, succeeded in commuting Maharaj’s death sentence to a life term following serious misconduct on the part of the judge and prosecution. Smith continues to fight for Maharaj's release, saying: “It is unfathomable to most rational people that the US Supreme Court says that innocence is not a reason to set a prisoner free. That Kris has spent 10,000 days in prison for a crime he did not commit is little more than legal kidnapping.”

Check out CNN's original series "Death Row Stories" (Sundays 9pm ET/PT) for a deeper look into this case.
33 YEARS ON DEATH ROW
Florida Department of Corrections
NAME: Manuel Valle
STATE: Florida
EXECUTED: 9/28/11
LAST MEAL: Fried chicken breast, white rice, garlic toast, peach cobbler and a Coca-Cola.

Manuel Valle killed a police officer in Coral Gables, Florida, in 1978 after being stopped for a traffic violation. In the dissenting opinion of Valle v. Florida, Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer stated that the inmate's long stay on death row amounted to cruel and unusual punishment. He said, "I have little doubt about the cruelty of so long a period of incarceration under sentence of death."
33 YEARS ON DEATH ROW
Georgia Department of Corrections
NAME: Jack Alderman
STATE: Georgia
EXECUTED: 9/16/08
LAST MEAL: Did not request a last meal. Ate regular prison meal of baked fish, peas, cole slaw, carrots, cheese grits, bun, fruit juice and chocolate cake.

Jack Alderman was convicted in 1975 of killing his wife, Barbara Jean Alderman. At the time of his execution, he was the longest-serving death row prisoner who had been executed in the United States.
31 YEARS ON DEATH ROW
Texas Department of Criminal Justice
NAME: David Lee Powell
STATE: Texas
EXECUTED: 6/15/2010
LAST MEAL: Four eggs, four chicken drumsticks, salsa, four jalapeno peppers, lettuce, tortillas, hashbrowns, garlic bread, two pork chops, white and yellow grated cheese, sliced onions and tomatoes, a pitcher of milk and a vanilla shake.

In May 1978, Powell fatally shot 26-year-old Austin police officer Ralph Ablanedo 10 times after he and his girlfriend were pulled over for missing a rear license plate. The two were on the way to a drug deal at the time of the crime. Opponents to his execution cited his exemplary behavior in prison and argued that he was no longer a threat to society, which is a legal requirement for capital punishment. Thirty-one years, three trials, and multiple appeals later, he died by lethal injection.

He spent the longest time on death row of anyone in Texas since the state resumed death penalty executions in 1982.
43 YEARS ON DEATH ROW
NAME: Gary Alvord
STATE: Florida
EXECUTED: Died of brain tumor in 2013

In 1974, Gary Alvord was sentenced to death for strangling three women in their home in Tampa, Florida after he escaped from a mental hospital. Although Alvord faced execution several times, his history of mental illness prevented the sentence from being carried out. Last year, after 43 years on death row, he died of natural causes. In the time he spent awaiting execution, 74 other inmates were sent to their deaths. Bill Sheppard, who represented Alvord, has said: “Gary is a product of a sick system. He was a living example of why we should not have the death penalty.... I would love for the state of Florida to tell us how much money they wasted trying to kill a guy they couldn't kill."
33 YEARS ON DEATH ROW
Death Penalty Information Center
NAME: Reginald Griffin
STATE: Missouri
CHARGES DISMISSED IN 2013

Reginald Griffin was implicated in the 1983 stabbing death of a fellow inmate at the Moberly Correctional Center in Moberly, Missouri, where he was serving time for an armed assault conviction. He along with two other inmates were charged with capital murder in 1987. There was no physical evidence linking Griffin to the crime, and in subsequent trials, the two inmates who served as witnesses for the prosecution in were offered benefits to testify. In 2011, the Missouri Supreme Court found that the state had withheld critical evidence and overturned Griffin's conviction. In 2013, all charges were dismissed. Upon his release, Cindy Short, one of his attorneys, said: "We humans are flawed, and those flaws have led to wrongful arrests, wrongful convictions and, unfortunately, this situation where time and time again you see prosecutors holding onto cases, even when evidence of innocence is clear."
36 YEARS ON DEATH ROW
AP
NAME: Michael Selsor
STATE: Oklahoma
EXECUTED: 5/1/12
LAST MEAL: Kentucky Fried Chicken’s crispy two breast and one wing meal with potato wedges and baked beans, a chicken thigh, apple turnover, two biscuits and honey, salt, pepper and ketchup.

In 1975, Michael Selsor shot gas-station clerk Clayton Chandler six times during a robbery in Tulsa, Oklahoma along with his accomplice, Richard Eugene Dodson. Although he was tried by a jury and sentenced to death in 1976, the U.S. Supreme Court and Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals ruled the death penalty unconstitutional later that year. Selsor's conviction was overturned by the U.S. Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals in 1996; however, his 1998 retrial ended in another death sentence. After 36 years, Selsor was executed in Oklahoma by lethal injection.

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