Dear friends,
As you can see, I have changed my profile to display the photo of Linda Carty, a 60 years old Briton who has been on death row at the Mountain View Unit high security prison, Waco, Texas, United States, for the past 19 years, awaiting a date with the hangman, having been convicted of a murder which emerging evidences strongly suggest she may not have committed.
Carty was born in St Kitts and Nevis where, as a school child, she had the honour of leading the choir to welcome the Prince of Wales on his visit to the Caribbean island. She grew up to become a primary school teacher whom the then Prime Minister described as exemplary in her dedication and discipline.
Later in adult life, she migrated to the United States and settled in Houston, Texas, from where her story changed with the accusation of having masterminded the murder of Joana Rodriquez, a 25 year old single mother.
The story says three men, Gerald Anderson, Chris Robinson and Carlos Williams, broke into the home and abducted Joana Rodriquez and her three month old baby at gun point, tied her up with a bag on her head and squeezed her into the booth of a car linked to Carty. Rodriquez died of asphyxiation in the process.
The three men would go on to testify in court that they were sent by Carty to carry out the kidnap and, for giving the testimony, they were left off the hook of death sentence.
The prosecution suggested that Carty had been pretending to be pregnant and wanted to steal Joana’s baby to satisfy her husband. They showed almost a dozen phone exchanges between Carty and Anderson on the night of the incident.
Carty has always maintained her innocence, pleading that she was framed up by the three men because she was an informant to the US Drug Enforcement Administration, DEA.
Her state appointed lawyer, Jerry Guerinot, did not help matters. Firstly, he is reputed to have handled over 30 death row cases in Harris County in which not one of his clients got acquittal. Secondly, he had no time to properly interview and prepare a defence for Carty. He reportedly only spoke with her for 15 minutes before the trial as he was busy with the organisation of his daughter’s wedding.
Carty has kept describing her trial as a farce, just as the British government has also filed an amicus curiae pointing out to the US authorities that the process of her trial was hugely unfair with significant disregard for her fundamental human rights, especially to justice, based on ineffective counsel.
More interesting is that, several years later, Chris Anderson who was one of the three that physically carried out the operation and proceeded, curiously, to testify against her as star witness, has publicly recanted his testimony, revealing that he was told by the prosecution to lie that he saw Carty suffocating Joana with a bag, and he did so in other to push the guilt away from himself to avoid the death penalty.
The Drug Enforcement agent, Charles Mathis, whom Carty reported to as informant, has also come up, several years later, to affirm that Carty was indeed a DEA informant and was incapable of what she had been accused of, but that he was blocked from going up to give evidence in her defence by the prosecution who threatened to publicly accuse him of having an affair with Carty to destroy his public image, work record and marriage.
It is also said that an independent tipster has raised new evidence that should support new appeal, but the courts seem to have closed their ears, eyes and doors to developments that should warrant any review of Carty’s case.
Carty believes they may just be acting to escape the embarrassment of their misjudgment. “It’s easy for them to put people in here and tell the public ‘I just put a monster behind bars’. But it’s so difficult, so embarrassing, for them to go back to the public later and say ‘We made a mistake, we need to vacate this sentence’. So you’ve got people in here, not just me, who shouldn’t be.”
This kind of situation is found around the world with the silence of politicians and top goons of government and justice institutions.
But, the biggest shame would be for the US and, in fact, this whole world, to watch someone go under the guillotine while there are evidences of reasonable doubts about her guilt. That degrades our entire civilization and contaminates our humanity.
If this happens in the United States, then there is no longer hope for justice in the globe. The least the US Supreme Court should do is open its doors to the new evidences and determine their veracity on merit, to discharge all reasonable doubts and, should Carty be innocent, give her back her life before the hangman arrives.
By Fred Edoreh (with inspiration from The Telegraph)
