Begging for her life ‘If I was in the UK, I would have been freed on appeal a long time ago’
The only British citizen on death row in America has begged Theresa May’s successor to raise her case with Donald Trump.
Speaking from behind a glass screen in white prison overalls Linda Carty, 60, wept as she told The Sunday Telegraph: “I’m a British citizen, and that’s something that cannot be erased or washed away. I want to appeal to Theresa May, to whoever’s next, because the buck stops with them.”
Carty has spent 19 years on death row in the high security Mountain View Unit, outside Waco, Texas. Last year, the US Supreme Court declined to consider what was probably her final appeal.
A former teacher, Carty was born and grew up in Saint Kitts and Nevis, in the Caribbean, before it gained independence from Britain in 1983. As a youngster, she performed there for the Prince of Wales, singing Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory.
Saint Kitts and Nevis is still part of the Commonwealth, and the Queen is its head of state. If executed, Carty would be the first British woman put to death since Ruth Ellis in 1955.
Carty’s trial heard that in 2001, in Houston, she orchestrated a plot to kill a young mother and steal her baby. For two decades, she has maintained her innocence.
Carty claims she was framed by three men because she was an informant for the US Drug Enforcement Administration [DEA]. She claims her state-appointed lawyer met her for 15 minutes before her trial.
“Don’t get me started about my lawyer,” she said. “My trial was a farce, pathetic, but what can you do? I’m black. The jury was white.”
Years later the star witness recanted his testimony. Her DEA handler also came forward, claiming prosecutors blocked him from testifying.
Last year the British government filed an amicus brief in Texas expressing “serious concerns for her human rights, fair trial, and access to justice.”
Carty said: “I think it’s clear if I was in the UK I wouldn’t be in jail. I would have had a right to a better lawyer. Or I would have been freed on appeal a long time ago.
“The problem here in Texas is that politicians and DAs [district attorneys] have to be tough on crime.
“They put people in jail and tell the public ‘I just put a monster behind bars’. But it’s so difficult, so embarrassing, to vacate a death sentence.
“The sad thing is you don’t get an opportunity, once you’ve executed someone, to go back and dig them up from the grave and say ‘Oops, hey, I made a mistake’. You’re done. You’re dead. It’s too late.”
Nick Allen