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Alabama – High cost of death penalty

april 11, 2012  source : http://www.timesdaily.com

With states like Alabama having to slash services over monetary woes, it’s an appropriate time to reconsider the high costs of the death penalty.

Many TimesDaily readers have expressed the opinion that Sheffield native and death row inmate Tommy Arthur has been in the news much too often in recent months.

They are tired of the seemingly endless appeals process that has allowed a convicted killer to remain on death row for 29 years. Since Arthur was sentenced in 1983, the courts have upheld his conviction in a murder-for-hire plot involving Muscle Shoals resident Troy Wicker. But at the same time, Arthur has avoided execution five times through the appeals process, most recently in late March.

One reader asked how much the efforts to execute Arthur have cost compared to simply sentencing him to life in prison without the possibility of parole. That’s a good question, considering the dire budget situation facing the state.

The answer is not simple, but by comparing Alabama to other states we can get a rough idea of the price.

The annual cost to house one state inmate in 2009 was about $15,118, according to the Alabama Department of Corrections. If 70-year-old Arthur reached the lifespan of the average U.S. male, he would serve a total of 35 years for capital murder at a cost to the state of about $529,130. That does not include the cost of his initial trial.

A report from the Death Penalty Information Center offers what it says is a “very conservative” estimate of $30 million to reach a single execution. This amount factors in the millions wasted on cases where there is never an actual execution.

One specific example is Maryland, where a legislative commission recommended abolishing the death penalty after a study showed the state was paying $37 million per execution.

Much of the costs involved in executing an inmate revolves around exhausting every effort to ensure the person is guilty. As DNA evidence has proved in recent years, the state doesn’t always get it right. The fact that Alabama has no law ensuring access to DNA testing for people convicted of capital crimes and does not require that biological evidence be preserved throughout the capital inmate’s incarceration is among several moral concerns.

But beyond those moral issues remains the nagging thought that revoking the death penalty could make a substantial difference as the state faces a $330 million budget shortfall.

With Arthur and 198 other inmates on death row, the state Legislature should undertake an in-depth study of the cost specific to Alabama’s death penalty.

 

Time to end death penalty in Texas

april 10, source : http://www.star-telegram.com

Two events last week — one in the Connecticut Senate chamber, the other in a Dallas courtroom — helped once again to focus attention on two of the nation’s most glaring flaws: wrongful convictions and capital punishment.

In Dallas, three more men were exonerated for crimes they did not commit, bringing to 30 the total number of exonerations in Dallas County since 2001. One of the men had been sentenced to 99 years in prison for a 1994 violent purse snatching involving a 79-year-old woman.

About 1,600 miles away in Hartford, the Connecticut Senate voted 20-16 to repeal the death penalty based partly on the growing evidence of wrongful convictions and the possibility that an innocent person could be executed. The state’s House of Representatives is likely to approve the measure soon, and the governor has vowed to sign it into law.

If the measure is enacted, Connecticut will join a growing number of states (the fifth in five years) to abolish capital punishment. California voters will weigh in on the subject in a ballot initiative in November.

After the Dallas defendants were officially cleared in court, both District Attorney Craig Watkins and District Judge Lena Levario declared that it was time to have a discussion about race and justice, The Dallas Morning News reported.

Actually we need a discussion about much more than that in America.

The latest Dallas case again revealed that prosecutors withheld evidence from the defense and that police, during their initial investigation, subjected the suspects to prejudicial identification tactics. These kinds of injustices cry out for discussion.

How many innocent people are behind bars based on overzealous police work, unethical prosecution or just honest mistakes? How many might be on Death Row?

When it comes to executions, there are signs that the nation’s thirst for blood is waning, bringing some hope to those of us who have been fighting against capital punishment for so long.

Even in Texas, which has the busiest death chamber in the country, the numbers are decreasing. Texas juries are sentencing fewer people to death, and the population on Death Row is declining.

Texas executed 13 people last year, the lowest number since 1996 when three people were killed by lethal injection. In 2000, a record 40 executions occurred in the state.

Four people have been put to death this year in Huntsville, bringing the total to 481 since 1982, when Texas resumed executions after the Supreme Court had declared capital punishment “cruel and unusual” in 1972.

Today 298 people are on Texas’ Death Row, including nine women. The ethnic breakdown is 29.2 percent Anglo, 40.6 percent black, 28.5 percent Hispanic and 1.7 percent other. At the end of fiscal 2001, the Death Row population was 446.

Those are all good signs, but not good enough.

If more states continue to lead the way, maybe the Lone Star State will eventually follow. New York, New Jersey, Illinois and New Mexico recently repealed capital punishment, and The Associated Press reports that Kansas and Kentucky are considering it.

Many people acknowledge that we have a flawed justice system, and that’s understandable with any structure that depends on human judgment and actions.

But it is because of the fallibility of humans that we mortals should not be charged with deciding to take a life — the one thing we can never give back in case of a mistake — in the name of the state.

The progress toward abolishment of the death penalty has been steady, but slow. It’s now time to pick up the momentum.

I’m ready to see the movement gather steam, wage an all-out legal assault and awareness campaign to change these barbaric laws one state legislature at a time.

We are a nation that should be better than this. Let’s vow to end capital punishment in this country, now and forever.

 

George Zimmerman seeks donations on his new website

breaking news 4.12 pm ET   George Zimmerman’s Attorney News Conference on CBS News

watch here : CBS

George Zimmerman’s attorneys said in a press conference this afternoon that they will no longer be representing him, because they have not been able to locate him and because he has rebuffed their counsel.

april 9, 2012 source : http://www.cbsnews.com

George Zimmerman, the man who fatally shot unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida, has started a website “to ensure my supporters they are receiving my full attention without any intermediaries.”

The authenticity of the website,therealgeorgezimmerman.com, has been confirmed by his lawyers, according to CNN and other news outlets.

“On Sunday February 26th, I was involved in a life altering event which led me to become the subject of intense media coverage. As a result of the incident and subsequent media coverage, I have been forced to leave my home, my school, my employer, my family and ultimately, my entire life,” the website states.

The site includes a link to donate funds to help pay for Zimmerman’s lawyers and living expenses because of his “forced inability to maintain employment.”

“I thank you for your patience and I assure you, the facts will come to light,” the website goes on to say. Zimmerman then goes on to quote a philosophy attributed to sociologist James W. Loewen: “People have a right to their own opinions, but not to their own facts. Evidence must be located, not created, and opinions not backed by evidence cannot be given much weight.”

Under a section titled “My race,” the website has a Thomas Paine quote: “The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.”

The website does not contain Zimmerman’s account of his interaction with Trayvon Martin.

Special prosecutor: No grand jury for Trayvon Martin case
Trayvon Martin’s family asks feds to investigate
Investigator: Martin family “will get answers”
2 Fla. officials step aside in teen death probe

Meanwhile, Florida State Attorney Angela Corey has decided not to use a grand jury in her investigation into the shooting death of Martin.

The grand jury, scheduled by the case’s previous prosecutor, was set to convene on April 10.

A statement released by her office said that the decision “should not be considered a factor in the final determination of the case.”

Corey was appointed by Gov. Rick Scott last month to take over the investigation. At that time she said she may not need a grand jury.

Corey, the state attorney for the Jacksonville area, was appointed to take over the case after the local state attorney, Norman Wolfinger, recused himself.

Monday’s statement said that the investigation continues, and declined further comment.

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‘I put my daddy on death row – but he’s innocent’: Man who testified against his father is campaigning for his release

april, 8 source : http://www.dailymail.co.uk

A man who testified against his father when he was seven years old is proclaiming his innocence and campaigning for his release – 23 years after he was sentenced to life in prison.

Jerry Michael Burgos, now 29, was called to the witness stand to give evidence against his father in 1989.

Jerry Burgos, who was 29 at the time, was charged with strangling his wife Nilsa – who was seven months pregnant – and setting their Polk Township, Pennsylvania, house on fire in an attempt to cover up the crime.

Campaign: Jerry Michael Burgos, right, and his brother Jason, left, are starting a Facebook group to proclaim the innocence of their father Jerry, centre

Campaign: Jerry Michael Burgos, right, and his brother Jason, left, are starting a Facebook group to proclaim the innocence of their father Jerry, centre

When investigators asked the boy what had happened on that fatal night, he said: ‘My dad took me and my brother out of the house and put us in his truck,’  according to the New York Post.

Burgos had told jurors that thick smoke engulfed their home and that he had managed to save his two sons from the blaze – but not his wife.

But the boy could not remember seeing signs of a fire, which allowed prosecutors to use his testimony to discredit his father’s.

The father-of-two had purchased a $75,000 life insurance policy four months before his wife’s death so prosecutors had reason to believe he had committed the crime.

The couple were also said to be involved with other lovers, which gave jurors another motive for the murder.

In 1989 Burgos was sentenced to the electric chair and found guilty of murder, arson and abuse of a corpse.

But Jerry Michael does not believe his father committed the crime. ‘I never hated my dad. I never felt like he did this,’ he told the New York Post. ‘I was always happy to see him when we went to trial.’

‘I feel like parents are a little bit of us. I really don’t think he did it. I can’t see myself doing it, and I couldn’t see him doing it either,’ he added.

The case that has been plagued by controversies went to retrial in 1993 because Burgos’s lawyer argued that prosecutors improperly used Jerry Michael’s testimony. But the second jury still found Burgos guilty.

Then, in 2004, Burgos’s attorney Philip Lauer won an appeal to test for genetic clues, as the previous trials had relied mainly on circumstantial evidence and had ignored DNA testing.

‘It seems like its standard fare in every case that everything gets tested, but in rural counties that isn’t the case,’ Lauer told the New York Post.

But even though a t-shirt found inside Nilsa’s body bag revealed somebody else’s DNA, it was not enough to overturn the verdict.

Now Jerry Michael and his brother Jason are creating a Facebook page to raise awareness about their father’s case. 

‘I love my mom, but I also lost my dad,’ Jerry Michael said. ‘I really don’t think he did it. I’m 99.9 percent sure that he didn’t do it. There’s no way.’

Feds want more time to weigh death penalty

april 8, 2012 source : http://www.lasvegassun.com

Prosecutors want more time to decide whether to seek the death penalty for a legally dead Mississippi man charged with a kidnapping that resulted in the death of a 12-year-old Las Vegas girl whose body was found in Louisiana.

Thomas Steven Sanders was declared dead in Mississippi in 1994. He surfaced as a suspect in the death of Lexis Roberts, whose body was found in October 2010 in Catahoula Parish, La. The body of her mother, Suellen Roberts, was found the next month in Yavapai County, Ariz.

Sanders is charged with the child’s death in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, La.

Prosecutors have asked for a 30-day extension until Aug. 1 to decide on seeking the death penalty. The motion says defense attorneys agree with the request.

U.S. District Judge Dee Drell has not yet ruled.

Authorities have said in court records that Sanders confessed to killing the mother and daughter. His attorneys, however, have filed motions to prevent that information from being presented at trial. They argue Sanders asked for a lawyer, and questioning should have stopped.

At the request of Drell, U.S. Magistrate James Kirk investigated the confession issue and in March wrote a lengthy recommendation to allow the confession at trial. Kirk’s recommendation contained some of the most graphic details to become public about the killing.

According to the judge’s recommendation and other court documents, Sanders was living at a storage facility in Las Vegas when he met Roberts. A relationship developed and they planned to take her daughter on a trip to Bearizona, a wildlife park in Arizona near the Grand Canyon, for the Labor Day weekend in 2010.

They spent the night in a hotel and played in the swimming pool, court records said. On their way back to Nevada, Sanders pulled over in the desert “ostensibly so Suellen could shoot his .22 rifle” but instead he shot her in the head, Kirk wrote in his March filing, which drew upon the confession documents.

“Sanders then loaded Lexis, who was in hysterics over seeing her mother murdered, into the car and traveled to Louisiana. He took Lexis to a wooded area and shot her in the back of the head and, when she didn’t die, he shot her twice more in the head. When she still didn’t die, he tried to shoot her through the heart. When she still didn’t die, he cut her throat, killing her,” Kirk wrote.

Sanders‘ attorneys have been trying to get the confession thrown out based on the argument that questioning continued after he asked for a lawyer. Kirk disagreed, saying that Sanders only requested a lawyer to discuss certain questions: why he killed the mother and daughter, what he had been doing while in Nevada and whether he had worked for a mattress company.

Authorities in Louisiana and Arizona have said Sanders could face state charges.

Sanders walked away from his family in Mississippi in 1987 and they didn’t hear for him for years. His parents, brother and ex-wife petitioned a Pike County, Miss., court in July 1994 to have him declared dead. Despite the death certificate, Sanders was able to move about easily and undetected even though he was arrested over the years, including for drug paraphernalia and a number of traffic and motor vehicle incidents, all in Tennessee. He was sentenced to two years in jail in Georgia for simple battery.

He’s being held without bond. His trial is scheduled for January.

Ohio death penalty debate continues as executions start up again

april 7, 2012 source : http://www.the-daily-record.com

COLUMBUS — Attorney General Mike DeWine has released the 2011 Capital Crimes Annual Report, the yearly snapshot of Ohio’s Death Row, listing facts and figures about inmates who have been executed and those facing death.

It’s a timely survey, given the continuing debate over Ohio’s administration of the death penalty.

According to the report, 313 death sentences have been issued in Ohio since 1981, a number that includes multiple sentences for some individual inmates.

Of those, the state has executed 46. The first was Wilford Berry on Feb. 19, 1999. The most recent was Reginald Brooks on Nov. 15 of last year.

The average age of executed inmates was 45. Nineteen were black, 27 white, all men, serving an average of more than 16 years on Death Row.

They killed 76 people, including 17 children.

The highest number of executions in recent years was in 2010, when eight inmates received lethal injections. Five more were put to death last year.

Sixteen inmates had their death sentences commuted. Gov. John Kasich has granted clemency twice, for Shawn Hawkins (convicted of a drug-related double murder in Hamilton County in 1989) and Joseph Murphy (convicted of killing an elderly Marion woman in 1987).

Former Govs. Ted Strickland, Bob Taft and Dick Celeste commuted the sentences of five, one and eight Death Row inmates, respectively.

Twenty-two inmates died in prison either of natural causes or suicide before their death sentences being carried out.

Eight were deemed mentally retarded and, thus, not eligible for death sentences. Eight are pending resentencing. And 71 had their sentences blocked by judicial action.

That leaves 154 people on Ohio’s Death Row, most of whom have been relocated from the Ohio State Penitentiary in Youngstown to the Chillicothe Correctional institution, located about 50 miles south of Columbus.

Four of those received death sentences last year. A dozen have dates set for their lethal injections.

Mark Wiles, convicted in the brutal knifing death of a Portage County teen, is next in line on April 18, pending any additional legal challenges.

Green light

The report was released a few days before a federal court ruled Ohio could move ahead with Wiles’ execution.

But Judge Gregory Frost didn’t mince words concerning Ohio and the death penalty.

In a decision last week, he declined a request from legal counsel for Wiles to stop his scheduled execution, opening the door for the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction to restart lethal injections after several months of delays.

But Frost made it clear prison officials better get it right this time.

He’s understandably skeptical, writing in his decision, “Ohio has time and again failed to follow through on its own execution protocol. The protocol is constitutional as written and executions are lawful, but the problem has been Ohio’s repeated inability to do what it says it will do.”

He added later, “They must recognize the consequences that will ensue if they fail to succeed in conducting a constitutionally sound execution of Wiles. They must recognize what performing a constitutionally sound Wiles execution and then returning to the flawed practices of the past would mean.”

Death penalty-free

Two Democratic state lawmakers continue to call for an end to the death penalty in Ohio, “raising fervent opposition” to Judge Frost’s decision last week,

Reps. Nickie Antonio, from the Cleveland area, and Ted Celeste, from the Columbus area, are sponsors of legislation that would ban the death penalty, replacing it with life in prison without parole.

Last week, they pointed to Connecticut, the 17th state in the country that has ceased putting inmates to death.

“Moving forward with executions is a step backward for Ohio,” Antonio said in a released statement. “Now is the time for Ohio to join policy leaders throughout the country and move to life without parole.”

Celeste added, “Connecticut will soon be the fifth state in the past five years to abolish this barbaric, outdated form of punishment. Public opinion is clearly changing with regard to capital punishment, and I am hopeful that Ohio will soon be able to capitalize on this momentum as well.”

Conn. Ends Death Penalty, But Not For 11 Men On Death Row

april 7 , source : http://www.thedailybeast.com

Can you call it abolition if you’re still executing people? David R. Dow considers Connecticut’s hair-splitting new law, and wonders whether our focus on innocence is to blame.

On the website of The New York Times, there’s an old photo of a man named William Petit standing next to his wife, Jennifer, and their two daughters, Hayley and Michaela, 17 and 11. They look peaceful and content, a portrait of happiness

Dr. Petit is the only one of the four still alive. On Aug. 6, 2007, his wife and daughters were brutally murdered in their Cheshire, Connecticut home. The manner of their shocking deaths helps explain an otherwise bizarre development: The Connecticut legislature is going to abolish the death penalty, but not until the Petit killers are put to death.

In a crime so chilling that even some death-penalty opponents I know reconsidered their opposition, Steven Hayes and Joshua Komisarjevsky entered the Petit house at three in the morning. They beat Dr. Petit unconscious with a baseball bat, tied him up in the basement, and went upstairs. There, Hayes raped Jennifer while Komisarjevsky attacked Michaela. The men strangled Jennifer to death and tied the girls to their beds. Then they set the house on fire.

With his legs still bound, Dr. Petit broke out of the basement and stumbled across the yard.  He screamed to his neighbor for help. Twelve hours later, Hayes and Komisarjevsky were under arrest. Connecticut juries sentenced both men to death.

And now they are the last two men to be sentenced to death in the state, because last week, by a vote of 20 to 16, the Connecticut Senate voted to abolish the death penalty. The bill will now move to the House, where it is certain to pass, before being signed by Gov. Daniel Malloy.

Yet Hayes and Komisarjevsky, along with nine other inmates, remain on Connecticut’s death row, their sentences unaffected by the new law. How can that be? How is it possible for a legislature to decide that the death penalty should be eliminated, but only after we first execute 11 more men?

The morality of the death penalty has nothing to do with error. It is not even about deterrence; and for most people, it is not about cost. It is about belief.

Home Invasion

I believe the answer to that question has to do with two troubling features of the modern anti-death-penalty movement. The first is the excessive reliance on the concept of innocence. The second is the often tepid, tone-deaf response from the abolitionist community to unspeakable crimes like the one that destroyed the Petit family.

The innocence revolution—driven largely by advances in DNA analysis—has been undeniably dramatic. Forty-four states now have innocence projectsdevoted to identifying and helping gain the release of innocent prisoners. Nationwide, nearly three hundred men have walked out of prison exonerated, after DNA proved beyond question we sent the wrong man to jail.

And as these cases began to permeate the public consciousness, death-penalty opponents seized on them as a tactic: None of those 289 exonerated inmates, they said, would have been released if he had been executed. The possibility of error became the central argument in the abolitionist brief.

Measured along one metric, the tactic has paid off: When the most recent abolition becomes official, Connecticut will be the fifth state in the past five years (along with New York, New Jersey, New Mexico, and Illinois) to have repealed the death penalty.

But that metric does not tell the full story. Connecticut has not actually executed anyone since Michael Ross, who waived his appeals, was put to death almost seven years ago. Before Ross, the state had not executed anyone in more than 30 years.  In Illinois, New York, New Jersey, and New Mexico, there were a combined 26 people on death row when capital punishment was stricken from the books.

In contrast, in the remaining death penalty states, more than three thousand men await execution.

With Connecticut now on the abolition side of the ledger, only 10 of the 33 states with a death penalty have executed someone in the past five years. Meanwhile, Texas alone has executed nearly half the people put to death in America since 2007 (102 out of 232).

read full article

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ALABAMA – Larry Smith. Marshall County Man Set Free; Was Once On Death Row

april, 6  source : http://whnt.com

A Marshall County man was released from jail Friday after serving more than 17 years in prison.  He was even on Alabama’s death row for capital murder.

Larry Randell Smith hugged his mother, Sherry Miller, as soon as he walked out of the Marshall County Sheriff’s Office.  Other friends waited to greet him.

Smith was convicted in August 1996 of the September 1994 robbery and shooting death of his friend, Dennis Harris.

He appealed, and his conviction and death sentence was upheld by the Alabama Supreme Court in 1999.

Smith continued to appeal, and in 2010, the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals unanimously ruled that he had an ineffective attorney defending him.

On Friday, he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit armed robbery in the first degree.

District Attorney Steve Marshall said prosecutors are comfortable with the resolution because the victim’s mother, Diane Maier, believes it is appropriate.

“The mother of the victim, who sat through the original trial as well as the [capital punishment hearing], firmly believed that Larry Smith did not pull the trigger and kill her son,” Marshall said.

“She believed he was involved, but also believes that Larry Smith can help that family determine who else was involved in the murder of her son.  She felt it was very important that that be part of what happened.”

Maier is in poor health and was not present for this court appearance, but affirmed her support for Smith during a phone call with prosecutors Friday morning.

The district attorney said the plea agreement was also due to a lack of evidence.

“This is a murder case that’s almost 20 years old,” said Marshall. “For us to be able to go back and retry it was next to impossible.”

“I think any time you have delay in the prosecution of cases, it is to the disadvantage of the prosecution,” Marshall added.  “It was a significant disadvantage in this case to have the facts presented to us almost 20 years later to have to deal with it.”

Prosecutors said some witnesses do not recall the circumstances of of their trial testimony before, and there are witnesses who have changed their testimony from what they initially told law enforcement.

Marshall said the investigation into the murder of Dennis Harris will continue, and as part of the plea agreement, Larry Smith will be interviewed further by investigators.

“One of the things that was important to [Harris’ mother] is that Mr. Smith be released to be able to cooperate with law enforcement,” Marshall said.

“Mr. Smith’s lawyers have had an investigator working on this case for several years. They have information that otherwise law enforcement did not have available to them previously that they have been willing to provide and are obligated to provide.”

Larry Smith said he is ready to move forward with life after serving 17 years and 5 months in prison, much of it on death row.

“I’m just glad it’s over and I’m ready to go home,” he said.

Smith’s mother said she is ready to fix her son a home-cooked meal for the first time in nearly two decades.

“I’m on top of the world, I thank God for this, for his freedom,” Smith’s mother said.

“It’s been miserable. I can’t say the words of what I’ve been through. It’s been so depressing.

“I knew all these years my son was innocent. Something he did not do.”

Miller said her relationship with the victim’s mother has helped her through it.

“We’ve been good friends through all these years, she’s been wonderful support,” Miller said about Diane Maier.

“She knows that my son was innocent. She never had no doubts. From day one she knew he was innocent.”

Smith and Miller said they hope to soon go camping and fishing together.

Ken Richey – Freed death row Briton in plea deal

april 5, 2021  source : the press Association

A Scotsman released from prison four years ago after spending two decades on Ohio’s death row has agreed to a plea deal over accusations that he threatened a judge who prosecuted his original case.

Ken Richey agreed to enter a guilty plea to a felony charge next week and will face no more than three years in prison, said Todd Schroeder, an assistant prosecutor in Putnam County.

Richey pleaded not guilty in January to charges that he left a threatening telephone message for the judge in the north-west Ohio county. Authorities said he called the courthouse on New Year’s Eve from his new home in Tupelo, Mississippi, warning the judge that he was coming to get him.

Richey was on death row for 21 years after being convicted of setting a fire that killed a two-year-old girl in 1986. He denied any involvement and became well-known as he fought for his release.

Following years of appeals, a federal court determined his lawyers mishandled the case, and his conviction was overturned.

County prosecutors initially planned to retry him, but Richey was released in 2008 under a deal that required him to plead no contest to attempted involuntary manslaughter. He also was ordered to stay away from the north-west Ohio county and anyone involved in the case.

Richey, though, carried a lifetime of bitterness over his conviction and could not stay out of trouble once outside of prison.

He returned to Scotland in 2008, but just over a year later, he was accused of breaking into an apartment and beating a man with a metal pipe. Those charges were later dropped when a witness failed to back the man’s story.

Richey returned to the US and was arrested in Minnesota in 2010. He was charged with assault after his 24-year-old son told police his father grew angry, smacked him with a baseball bat and threatened to kill him after the pair had been wrestling.

Prosecutors in Ohio said Richey was still wanted on a warrant in Minnesota.

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Linda Carty – Gran Appeals To UK To Save Her From Execution

april 5 2012  source : http://news.sky.com

watch interview : click here

The British Government has said it is doing all it can the save the life of a British grandmother who has spent 11 years on Death Row in the United States.

Linda Carty, 53, could receive a date for her execution at any moment after her final attempts to secure a new appeal failed.

She would become the first British woman to be executed in 50 years.

She was convicted of killing a young mother in Texas a decade ago but has always said she was framed.

Her lawyers believe she was failed by the American legal system and admit her situation is “desperate”.

Carty spoke to Sky News on Death Row in Texas and told us: “I am 110% innocent. I know I didn’t commit this crime. They took 11 years of my life for something I know I didn’t do.”

She was born on the Caribbean island of St Kitts before its independence from Britain and now wants support from the UK.

“If you don’t then you’re telling me there’s no value to my life and if you do intercede it is saying that every British national, it doesn’t matter whether we were born in the mother country or in the colonies, we matter,” Carty said.

“We are British. I can’t wash off my nationality with soap and water. I am going to always be British.”

Ms Carty said she feels sympathy for the family of victim Joana Rodriguez.

“She was somebody’s child too, somebody’s daughter. For me it’s not only a healing process but its to show the families that the person you’ve been hating all these years did not commit this crime,” she said.

Ms Carty is being represented by the campaign group Reprieve.

Director Clive Stafford-Smith said her best chance of avoiding the death penalty was clemency.

Rick Perry, the longest serving governor in the Texas’ history, has now signed off on 242 executions since December 2000 – the most of any governor ever.

Read Greg Milam’s blog on executions in the US

The Foreign Office said it is putting pressure on the authorities in Texas.

“The Prime Minister and British Government are deeply concerned by the position Ms Carty is in,” it said in a statement.

“We are committed to using all appropriate influence to prevent the execution of any British national.

“We are working closely with Ms Carty’s legal team to ensure their work to secure clemency is supported by appropriate political representations.”

Since her conviction, Ms Carty has been held at the Mountain View unit in Gatesville where all of the women on death row in Texas are held.

She admitted she fears her death sentence.

“I won’t get up and ask the British Government to go out in the public and lobby for me had I known that I am guilty because then it would be an embarrassment not only to myself and my family but also the country that I love.

“So for me when I say I am innocent and that I didn’t commit this crime I mean that.”

:: Meanwhile, the Connecticut Senate has voted to repeal the state’s death penalty, moving it one step closer to becoming the fifth US state in five years to abandon capital punishment. The measure now moves to the House of Representatives.

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