Frances Newton - TX - 1 December 2004 - Stayed

[softheart]

I am beyond words, all I can think of is Oh Lord what have we become.
softie



July 8

TEXAS:

Woman's execution scheduled for Dec. 1--Longtime inmate nearing end of
years of appeals


After 16 years on death row for shooting her husband and 2 young children
in a scheme to collect a large insurance payment, 39-year-old Frances
Elaine Newton sat stoically in a Houston courtroom Wednesday as a judge
set her execution date for Dec. 1.

Newton smiled at friends and family members in the courtroom and remained
composed as state District Judge Jim Wallace read and signed her death
warrant. If the lethal injection is carried out, Newton will be only the
third woman executed in Texas in recent history. The other 2, including a
Houston ax murderer, were put to death after capital punishment resumed in
Texas in 1982.

More than a dozen observers turned out for Newton's brief court
appearance, including Newton's mother, two sisters and several other men
and women from a prison ministry who have visited Newton on death row for
several years.

"I know she's innocent. We're a praying family, and we're going to keep on
praying," said Newton's mother, Iva Nelms, 63, outside the courtroom
Wednesday.

Newton has exhausted nearly all of her avenues for appeal. State and
federal appeals courts have repeatedly rejected claims that her
constitutional rights were violated because her court-appointed lawyer at
her 1988 trial, Ron Mock, was incompetent.

Mock said just days before the trial that he had not filed any motions,
spoken with any witnesses or submitted a list of possible witnesses to
subpoena.

Testifying in her trial, Newton blamed the murders on a drug dealer known
only as Charlie, to whom she said her husband owed money.

In April 1987, Harris County sheriff's deputies found the bodies of Adrian
Newton, 23, and the couple's children, Alton, 7, and Farrah Elaine, 21
months, in the family's northwest Harris County apartment.

Authorities said Frances Newton committed the murders with a gun from her
boyfriend's home, then hid it in an abandoned house.

Police recovered a pistol that experts said was the murder weapon, and
prosecutors offered tests revealing gun residue on the clothes Newton wore
the day of the murders. Also, witnesses said Newton had forged her
husband's signature on $100,000 worth of insurance policies. Newton was
convicted of capital murder in October 1988.

Outside the courtroom Wednesday morning, Newton's supporters remained
hopeful that the real killer will come forward before the execution.

"It would be wonderful if somebody would just walk up and say, 'I know
what happened,'" Nelms said. "I really hope God touches somebody's heart
and makes them step forward. It's happened before."

Newton's current attorney, Yolanda Jarmon, asked Wallace to postpone
setting an execution date until later this year, after the U.S. Supreme
Court has a chance to review her final petition.

Jarmon declined to comment after the court hearing.

Assistant District Attorney Roe Wilson said the courts have thoroughly
reviewed Newton's case. A recent federal appeals court ruling made a
last-minute hearing by the nation's highest court unlikely, Wilson said.

Aileen Jones, a Houston resident and volunteer who has visited Newton
regularly on death row, said she was disappointed to see Newton reach the
final stages of her case.

"Now that we're in the 11th hour, it has become a perfunctory, procedural
thing," Jones said after seeing Newton in court.

In the days before the trial, Newton and her family were unhappy with
Mock's representation and decided to hire a private attorney, David Eisen.

As the trial was set to begin, Newton asked state District Judge Charles
Hearn to postpone the trial so her new attorneys could prepare. When the
judge refused, Eisen withdrew and the trial began with Mock as the lead
defense attorney.

A federal appeals court ruled in May that Newton failed to show how she
was harmed by the decision not to delay the trial.

"This is a real travesty, as far as I'm concerned." said Eisen, who was at
the courthouse Wednesday morning. "She should have received some sort of
appellate relief."

While 321 men have been put to death in Texas since capital punishment
resumed in 1982, only 2 women have been executed. Karla Faye Tucker was
put to death in 1998 for killing a Houston couple with a pickax, and Betty
Lou Beets was executed in 2000 for murdering her husband outside Dallas.

Before them, the last woman put to death in Texas was Chipita Rodriguez.
She was hanged in 1863 for the ax murder of a horse trader.

(source: Houston Chronicle)