FACING DEATH British gran Linda Carty facing execution in US for killing her neighbour and abducting four-day-old baby after losing appeal
The St Kitts native has been on death row for 15 years and claims she was convicted largely on the word of her co-accused.
A BRITISH grandmother on death row in the United States has lost her appeal against execution in Texas.
Linda Carty has protested her innocence over the past 15 years after being convicted of murder and kidnapping in 2002.
Linda Anita Carty (born 5 October 1958) is a woman possessing both United States and British citizenship who is on death row in Texas. She was convicted and sentenced to death in February 2002 for the 2001 abduction and murder of 25-year-old Joana Rodriguez, in order to steal her newborn son. Carty claims she was framed by drug dealers[ in response to her work as an informant and has appealed her conviction. Her appeals have been unsuccessful to date, but she launched a fresh appeal in 2015 which was granted as reported on 26 February 2015. In 2018, however, the appeal was eventually denied. Barring the granting of clemency, she currently stands to become the first female British national to be executed since Ruth Ellis in 1955, and the first British black woman executed in more than a century. She is the sole death row inmate in the U.S. with British citizenship.
Linda Carty was born on the Commonwealth island of St Kitts. She's awaiting execution in Texas: if she's killed, she'll be the first British woman to be executed since Ruth Ellis, over 50 years ago. In this moving documentary, film maker Steve Humphries goes in search of the real Linda Carty: who she is, where she came from, and how she ended up in arguably the worst place in the world, Death Row. Linda was convicted of capital murder in 2002 after it was alleged she was the mastermind behind a horrific crime. In May 2001, a criminal gang broke into the home of Linda's neighbours and abducted a young mother and her three-day-old baby boy. The next day the baby was found alive in one of Linda's cars, but his mother was found dead in another - she had been suffocated.
Investigators initially suspected Carty after they discovered that she had told people she was going to have a baby despite not appearing pregnant. While interviewing neighbors in the apartment complex, police heard from one neighbor that she sat with Carty in a car, saw a child's car seat in the car, and was told by Carty that she was pregnant; this was remarkable to the witness because Carty didn't appear pregnant. Police then telephoned Carty and asked her to meet with them. She told them that a car she had rented and her daughter's car may have been used in the crime. She was placed under arrest. Then she directed them to a location where both cars were found: the live baby was in one, and the suffocated victim was in the back of the other. Carty's fingerprints were in both cars. They found various items of baby paraphernalia.
