Linda Carty

“I’m sorry if I sound desperate”

by 4WardEver UK – Jan 2010
compiled from various sources
Any news updates on this case will be listed at the foot of this item

Linda Carty was convicted in 2002 for killing a woman in the USA as part of a plot to kidnap the victim’s baby, after a trial campaigners say was “catastrophically flawed”. She is now on death row in Texas, the only British woman awaiting execution in George Bush’s home state. She has always denied the charges.

The Fifth Circuit court in New Orleans conceded that Carty received an inadequate defence at her murder trial in 2002 but refused to reverse the jury’s decision.

In 2009 she sent out an appeal for help via a plinth in Trafalgar Square. She became one of a string of people to “appear” on the London monument as part of the long-running Antony Gormley One & Other Exhibition.

A life-size cardboard cut-out of Linda stood on the platform and a recorded message from Carty was also be played calling on the British public and Government to intervene to help save her from the lethal injection.

In the message, Linda said: “I’m sorry if I sound like a desperate woman. I am desperate, because the British people may be my last hope. If they ask for my life to be spared, maybe Texas will listen.”

Fair Trials International has given the following account of the sequence of events that led to her arrest, prosecution and sentence:

Linda Carty is a 50 year old British citizen born on the Caribbean island of St Kitts, where she worked as a primary school teacher and volunteered for a social work group.

In 1982, Linda and her family immigrated to the US. There she furthered her studies and later became a pharmaceutical technician.

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