Execution Halted, Texas Woman Was To Be Executed

29 Jan, 2013

Update — A Dallas judge has halted the scheduled Tuesday night execution of a Texas woman who would have been the first woman put to death in the U.S. in three years.

The order from state District Judge Larry Mitchell moves the execution of Kimberly McCarthy, 51, to April 3.

McCarthy faced lethal injection for the 1997 beating, stabbing and robbery of a 71-year-old neighbor in Lancaster, about 15 miles south of Dallas.

Lawyers for McCarthy, who is black, argued that the jury that convicted and sentenced her to death was selected improperly based on race. It was made up of 11 white people and one black person.

The  Dallas County District Attorney’s office said it wouldn’t appeal the ruling. The DA’s office had called the effort a “mere delay” tactic, saying the record didn’t support a valid legal claim for discrimination.

Kimberly McCarthy, a Texas woman convicted in the 1997 gruesome murder of her 71-year-old neighbor, is scheduled to be executed Tuesday night. The execution will make her the first female inmate in three years to be put to death in the U.S.

McCarthy, 51, was sentenced to death by lethal injection for the 1997 robbery, beating and fatal stabbing of retired college psychology professor Dorothy Booth. Authorities said it was among three slayings linked to McCarthy, a former nursing home therapist who was addicted to crack cocaine.

McCarthy will be the 13th woman executed in the U.S. and the fourth in Texas, the nation’s busiest death penalty state, since the Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to resume in 1976. Within that same time period, more than 1,300 male inmates have been executed nationwide.

Federal Bureau of Justice Statistics compiled from 1980 through 2008 show that women make up about 10 percent of homicide offenders nationwide. According to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, 3,146 people were on the nation’s death rows as of Oct. 1, 2012, and only 63 – 2 percent – were women.

In a final legal effort to spare her life, McCarthy’s lawyers asked Gov. Rick Perry on Monday to use his executive authority to issue a 30-day reprieve. They also appealed to Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins to withdraw or modify the execution date, citing his support that Texas adopt a law allowing death-row inmates to appeal on racial grounds. McCarthy is black, while all but one of her 12 Dallas County jurors were white.

The U.S. Supreme Court refused to review her case earlier this month, and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles turned down a clemency request Friday.

Her lead attorney, Doug Parks, said drug use was McCarthy’s downfall.

“I think when she’s off dope she’s probably a pretty good person,” he said. “I believe now, as I did then, that in the penitentiary, Kim would be absolutely no danger to anyone.”

Investigators said McCarthy called Booth to borrow a cup of sugar. When she came to pick it up, McCarthy attacked Booth with a butcher knife at her home in Lancaster, about 15 miles south of Dallas. Prosecutors said McCarthy forced the woman’s hand to a chopping block so she could cut off her finger to remove her wedding ring.

“I remember the pain and agony that poor woman lived through before McCarthy delivered the final stab wounds,” former Dallas County assistant district attorney Greg Davis recalled last week.

Blood DNA evidence also tied McCarthy to the December 1988 slayings of 81-year-old Maggie Harding and 85-year-old Jettie Lucas. Harding was stabbed and beaten with a meat tenderizer, while Lucas was beaten with both sides of a claw hammer and stabbed.

McCarthy, who denied any involvement in the attacks, was indicted but not tried for those slayings.

“She took the most defenseless, the most helpless people, people that trusted her, that she chose to attack,” Davis said.

The Dallas County jury already found McCarthy guilty of Booth’s slaying when evidence during the punishment phase of her trial linked her to the other two slayings, which convinced jurors to send her to death row.

Prosecutors also showed that McCarthy stole Booth’s Mercedes and drove to Dallas, pawned the ring for $200 and then went to a crack house to buy cocaine. Evidence also showed she used Booth’s credit cards at a liquor store and was carrying Booth’s driver’s license.

Booth’s DNA was found on a 10-inch butcher knife recovered from McCarthy’s home.

McCarthy said she blamed the crime on two drug dealers she identified only as “Kilo” and “J.C.” There was no evidence to show either existed.

McCarthy was tried twice for Booth’s slaying, most recently in 2002. Her first conviction in 1998 was thrown out three years later by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which ruled police violated her rights by using a statement she made to them after asking for a lawyer.

McCarthy is a former wife of Aaron Michaels, founder of the New Black Panther Party, and he testified on her behalf. They had separated before Booth’s slaying.

McCarthy is among 10 women on death row in Texas, but the only one with an execution date.

AP

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