BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – THE only course of action that remains for Linda Carty to be saved from execution by lethal injection is an appeal to the US Supreme Court.
News reaching SKNVibes states that Carty, the Kittitian of Anguillan parentage who is on Death Row in the Mountain View Unit women’s prison outside Gatesville in Texas, lost her appeal to the US Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans on Friday, September 18.
According to abc13now.com, Carty’s current attorney said the Fifth US Circuit Court of Appeals called this a close one, finding that her trial attorney acted unreasonably. But the court also concluded that even if her attorney had done everything she asked at trial, the evidence against her was overwhelming.
Tom Leonard, a New York-based British online media house writer, quoted Clive Stafford Smith as saying, “I'm afraid our worst fears have now been realised for Linda.” Smith is the Director of Reprieve, a British charity which has provided the condemned woman with legal representation.
“Although she has recourse to the Supreme Court, experience suggests that she will soon be in the Texas execution chamber. Linda Carty has been tragically and disastrously failed by her defence lawyer at trial, and by the US legal system,” Smith said.
The 51-year-old grandmother, who holds a UK dependent territory passport, was convicted and sentenced to death in 2002 for the murder of her neighbour Joana Rodriguez (25).
Evidence presented at her trial in 2002 stated that on May 16, 2001, three men, Chris Robinson, Gerald Anderson and Carlos Williams, invaded the apartment of Rodriguez, beat her up and duct taped her partner (Raymundo Cabrera) and another individual after beating them also, and abducted the woman and her three-day-old son.
Further evidence submitted in the trial stated that the abductors hog-tied Rodriguez with duct tape, put a plastic bag over her head and placed her in the trunk of a car rented by Carty. Rodriguez died from suffocation but her son was found unharmed in the back seat of another car.
The three men, who were convicted criminals, pleaded guilty to lesser charges and claimed that Carty had recruited them to help kidnap and murder Rodriguez so she could have the young woman’s baby.
Carty however pleaded not guilty and to date maintains her innocence. She said the three men were former drugs traffickers who wanted revenge on her for her work as a secret informant for the US Drug Enforcement Administration.
She was represented by Jerry Guerinot, an attorney chosen by the court. Carty blames her conviction on him, who she claimed failed to do his homework. She said he neglected to present witnesses who would have spoken favourably of her and refused to spend more than 15 minutes with her prior to the trial.
A spokesperson for Reprieve said that the New Orleans court acknowledged that Guerinot failed to interview a crucial witness, Carty’s common law husband, and consequently “performed objectively unreasonably” in his duty to defend her.
In a seven-minute appeal, recorded in the Mountain View Unit women’s prison and broadcast on Trafalgar Square’s fourth plinth in London on Thursday, September 10, Carty said, “Time is now running out and I appeal to every one of you and to the British government to please help me…I’m sorry if I sound like a desperate woman. I am desperate because the British people may be my last hope. If they ask for my life to be spared, maybe Texas will listen.”
Also in her broadcast, Carty said it was “everybody’s worst nightmare” to be executed for a crime she claimed she did not commit. “I am living that nightmare,” she added. “I have begged for justice and a fair hearing here in the United States, but I am afraid that by the time people find out the truth, it will be too late.”
Her attorney said they are left now with two options - asking the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider its decision or asking the US Supreme Court to hear the case. It is possible they may do both, and if they do not win an appeal Carty could be executed sometime early next year.
Linda Carty, also known as Linda Hunte, is a former resident of Old Road and was a primary school teacher in St. Kitts before migrating to England and subsequently to the US.
