Monday, March 1, 2010

Actors join death penalty protest for UK grandmother

Actors Colin Firth and Julie Christie have joined an impassioned plea to save the life of death row prisoner Linda Carty.

Carty, a UK citizen facing death within months in a Texas prison for the abduction and murder of a 25-year-old woman, counts several high-profile celebrities among her supporters. The actors joined authors Philip Pullman, Zadie Smith and Martina Cole in writing a letter to the Sunday Times.

The letter, organised by anti-death penalty group Reprieve, which slams the 2002 trial of the 51-year-old grandmother as 'catastrophically flawed', says: 'Now is the time to get very worried about Linda - and to support the government's Supreme Court appeal on her behalf. Linda would not be on death row if she had been able to afford a decent defence lawyer. '

It continues: 'The [British] government has told the Supreme Court that Texas's failure to notify it of her arrest prevented Linda from receiving desperately needed legal assistant from the British consulate - that would probably have saved her life.'

Reprieve will submit a video to the court along with document from the British goverment outlining its concern on Carty's behalf.

Carty, who faces execution by lethal injection, has always proclaimed her innocence.

Source: Monsters and Critics, March 1, 2010

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