Frances Newton Put to Death by State
By Phillip Martin
From the Houston Chronicle:
After weeks of intense legal wrangling, Newton's execution went ahead after the U.S. Supreme Court and Gov. Rick Perry refused to intervene. She was the 349th killer put to death in Texas since executions were resumed in 1982, and the first black woman executed in Texas since the Civil War...
For death penalty opponents, Newton's case seemed to embody everything they found wrong with capital punishment. In her initial trial, she was represented by an attorney who acknowledged he had done little to research the case and later was suspended by the State Bar of Texas.
When Newton received a stay to, in part, retest incriminating stains on the dress she wore the night of the killings, defense attorneys were stunned to learn earlier testing had destroyed the evidence.
It is past time for Texas to pass a law requiring a moratorium on state executions. According to the Texas Moratorium Network, 119 innocent people have walked off Death Row in the modern era. The cost to try a death penalty case costs about $2.3 million, three times as much as detaining someone in a cell at the highest security level for 40 years.
Posted by Phillip Martin at September 15, 2005 03:51 PM
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"Assistant District Attorney Roe Wilson repeatedly insisted that only one pistol had been recovered, and recanted as a slip of the tongue a videotaped statement in which she had confirmed a second gun's existence."
A slip of the tongue? By an assistant district attorney? Sounds more like recanting a former story to make a current one more plausible.
How does anyone know that the ballistics tests done last year were not made from this second gun that now they say was never found rather than the gun Francis Newton admitted having hidden in that house?
And the one other piece of evidence used to convict her which might have cleared her in the end was destroyed? That in itself should have been basis for Governor Goodhair to at least have commuted her sentence. But I guess in Republican circles, district attorneys can do no wrong. Particularly if they are also Republicans. Given the ongoing investigations into the HPD crime lab it would seem a governor would be less "trigger happy" than usual. There really should be a moratorium. But as long as Governor Goodhair is in office, I doubt you will see it.
