Texas woman set to be 500th execution in state
JUAN A. LOZANO, AP
HUNTSVILLE,
Texas (AP) — Texas, the nation's busiest death penalty state, is set to
mark a solemn moment in criminal justice Wednesday with the execution
of convicted killer Kimberly
McCarthy.
If
McCarthy is put to death in Huntsville as planned, she would become the
500th person executed in Texas since the state resumed carrying out the
death penalty in 1982. The 52-year-old
also would be the first woman executed in the U.S. since 2010.
McCarthy's
attorney, Maurie Levin, said she has exhausted all efforts to block the
execution, after denials by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
"If there was something to appeal, I would," said Levin.
Texas
has carried out nearly 40 percent of the more than 1,300 executions in
U.S. since the Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to resume in
1976. The state's standing stems from
its size as the nation's second most populous state as well as its
tradition of tough justice for killers.
With
increased debate in recent years over wrongful convictions, some states
have halted the practice entirely. However, 32 states have the death
penalty on the books. Still, it's clear
the debate over capital punishment has touched Texas, with lawmakers
providing more sentencing options for juries and courts narrowing the
cases for which death can be sought.
McCarthy
faces execution for the 1997 robbery, beating and fatal stabbing of
retired college psychology professor Dorothy Booth. Booth had agreed to
give McCarthy a cup of sugar before
she was attacked with a butcher knife at her home in Lancaster, about
15 miles south of Dallas. Authorities say McCarthy cut off Booth's
finger to remove her wedding ring.
Police also had linked two other slayings to McCarthy, a former nursing home therapist who became addicted to crack cocaine.
In
her appeals, McCarthy contended prosecutors improperly excluded black
jurors and that her lawyers failed to challenge the moves at trial or in
early appeals. McCarthy is black, and
Booth was white. All but one of the 12 jurors at McCarthy's trial were
white.
In
January, McCarthy had been moved to a small holding cell a few steps
from the Texas death chamber when a Dallas judge moved her execution to
April. That timing then was reset for June
when Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins said he wanted to
await the outcome of capital punishment-related bills before lawmakers
in Austin.
On
Tuesday, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals declined to reconsider its
denial a day earlier of McCarthy's appeal, saying her claims should
have been raised previously.
Levin,
a University of Texas law professor, said because the court's ruling
focused on a procedural and not a substantive issue, the case cannot be
appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
"The
shameful errors that plague Ms. McCarthy's case — race bias,
ineffective counsel and courts unwilling to exercise meaningful
oversight of the system — reflect problems that are central
to the administration of the death penalty as a whole. For this to be
the emblem of Texas' 500th execution is something all Texans should be
ashamed of," Levin said.
McCarthy declined to speak with reporters as her execution date neared.
Anti-death
penalty groups planned to protest outside the Walls Unit in Huntsville,
where McCarthy is set to receive a lethal injection Wednesday evening.
"The whole world is looking at Texas," said Gloria Rubac, with the Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement in Houston.
McCarthy
would be the 13th woman nationwide and the fourth in Texas put to death
since 1976. In the same period, more than 1,300 men have been executed
nationwide, 496 of them in Texas.
Virginia is a distant second, nearly 400 executions behind.
Federal
statistics show that over the past three decades women account for
about 10 percent of convicted murderers. According to the NAACP Legal
Defense Fund, there were 63 women on death
row in the U.S. as of Jan. 1, representing 2 percent of the nation's 3,125 condemned prisoners.
Prosecutors
showed that McCarthy stole Booth's Mercedes and drove to Dallas, pawned
the wedding ring she had removed from the woman's severed finger 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.
Booth's DNA was found on a 10-inch butcher knife recovered from McCarthy's home.
McCarthy blamed the crime on two drug dealers, but there was no evidence either existed.
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.
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
(ah good old Texas if you can’t kill women closing clinics there’s always the old fashioned way.)
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