GATE TO HELL
How Brit gran Linda Carty ended up on Death Row for gruesome murder and plot to steal baby – but insists she was FRAMED
LINDA Carty has spent the last 21 years as the only British citizen - and one of only six women - on Death Row, all for a horrific crime she insists she was framed for.
In 2001, Carty was found guilty of kidnapping and murdering her neighbour Joana Rodriguez in order to snatch her newborn baby for herself.
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And now, despite numerous appeals and highly-regarded British lawyers arguing she wasn't given a fair trial, Carty spends her days cut off from her loved ones, woken up at 3am, then walked straight to work - all the while knowing she could be executed any day now.
“Anyone who knows the system knows that Texas does not admit when they’re wrong,” she says. “If I were guilty of this crime, I’d have received my punishment.”
Carty’s lawyer Michael Goldberg, from the UK, adds: "When I took this case on I believed in the death penalty. But when you see the injustice in the system here, you can’t believe in it."
Susanna Reid adds: "All her appeals have been rejected and she could be the next woman executed. But she's always maintained her innocence."
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As she becomes the subject of British Grandma on Death Row with Susanna Reid, we take a look at Carty’s case - and why she insists she was set up.
Suffocated to death
Joana Rodriguez was a young mum who had given birth to her baby son, Ray, just two days before her harrowing death.
The mother and son were abducted from their apartment in Houston, Texas, on May 16, 2001.
Later that day the tiny boy was found, alive, in a car - but his mum's body was discovered in the boot of a second car.
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Joana's legs and arms had been bound with duct tape, along with her mouth and nose and she had a plastic bag over her head.
The 25-year-old had suffocated to death - and both cars belonged to Carty.
Carty's pregnancy lies
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In the months leading up to the gruesome crime Carty, who was born in St Kitts and moved to Houston in Texas to work as a primary school teacher, told neighbours she would soon become a mum.
However, when police later interviewed them, the neighbours claimed to be surprised because Carty, who they say had bought a baby seat for her car, did not look pregnant.
Her trial also heard that she had told her husband, from whom she had recently separated, that she was expecting a baby.
And, the day before the murder, she told him she was going to have the baby the next day, and told someone else she had already given birth the day of the crime.
The real culprits?
Despite Carty’s cars being at the scene of the crime - complete with lots of baby equipment, including a car seat and clothes - she claims there's an explanation.
She says she lent them to a man she knew who, entirely without her knowledge, took a band of thugs to attack Rodriguez in a robbery that went fatally wrong.
The man she'd lent the cars to was shot dead in a gangland killing in the runup to Carty's trial.
The other three, Gerald Anderson, Chris Robinson, and Carlos Williams, placed the blame firmly at her door throughout the trial, claiming she was the mastermind behind the whole twisted scheme.
And, despite Carty saying she didn't know the three men, there were several phone calls logged from her phone to Anderson between 1.09am and 1.14am.
While the three men received lengthy prison sentences, Linda was the only one sentenced to death - due to plea deals.
She claims she was framed for the kidnap and the murder because she was working as a drug informant for the US authorities, having been sentenced to 10 years probation in 1992 for auto theft and impersonation of an FBI agent.
'An unfair trial'
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Baker Botts, the law firm handling Carty's appeal, have expressed "serious concerns for Ms Carty's human rights, fair trial, and access to justice".
Michael Goldberg argues that her trial attorney, Jerry Guerinot, handled her defense in an incompetent manner, failing to call any witnesses who may have persuaded the jury she didn’t deserve execution, and notes Guerinot has never won a death penalty case over his entire career.
Goldberg also got two of the co-accused men to later admit they had been coerced into testifying against Carty.
And, years after her conviction, Carty’s handler at the Drug Enforcement Agency, Charles Mathis, came forward to say he did not believe she was capable of committing the crime.
Mathis recruited Carty as a confidential informant who could provide useful information to the DEA on drug dealing in the city given her expertise as a trained pharmacist.
The reason he never came forward sooner to testify for Carty, he said, was that Connie Spence, the lead prosecutor in the case, threatened to concoct a story about him having had an affair with Carty,
“I was shocked when Spence said this … I felt Spence was threatening and blackmailing me,” he said.
The judge heard further allegations that the prosecutors had fabricated evidence, destroyed essential case notes and emails that might have helped the defence and withheld several recorded witness statements that should have been handed over to the defence team.
However, the court ruled that the original evidence was overwhelming and it wouldn't have changed the trial's outcome, had any of this been known at the time.
'The scariest, loneliest feeling'
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Carty says she “owes everything to her British citizenship,” and her help from Baker Botts.
She says: “If it had not been for their presence, Texas would’ve been able to flush me away.”
And while she doesn’t let the thought of being executed “consume her thoughts,” there’s no denying she’s scared.
Recalling her friend being taken to be killed, she says: “It was the scariest, coldest, loneliest feeling, knowing that when they leave the building where we’re housed that you’ll never see them again.
“You hear on the radio she died and you go back and you sit in your bed and cry and cry. Because the sense of loss and despair comes over you and you realise it could happen to anyone of us here and not because of guilt, but because of circumstances and the system itself has failed you.
“I still remember the look on her face when she went out of here. And the last thing she said to me was 'don’t stop fighting.'”
'No one deserves the death penalty'
And, while Linda believes her three co-accused were responsible for the crimes she's accused of, she doesn't think they deserve the death penalty.
"It’s so deeply flawed,” she says. “I don’t think they deserve it because I think he should sit in prison and know that just like you took that person's life, you’ll never be able to get out and have freedom.
“That’s the punishment I’d like to give to him. It's worse knowing that you’ll never see the light of day.”
But, despite meeting Carty, Susanna is still unsure on her verdict.
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She told the : “When you talk to those people about the disputed evidence, you end up thinking, is there more to this? Who was responsible for it?
"What actually happened that night? Was she a wicked, wicked person as one of her co- defendants called her and the ringleader? Or was there a plea deal, which meant that she was held responsible? I don’t think there’s an easy or comfortable answer.”
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