y thoughts have spent more time in Linda Carty’s cell than anywhere else this past while. As the final door closes on the female Briton on Texas’ Death Row, the thoughts of people far away are the only company she has. Hope has definitely left the building.

In reality, there isn’t much room for thoughts in there. When the legal action charity Reprieve erected a life-size model of Carty’s cell on St Martin-in-the-Fields next to Trafalgar Square in August, the overriding impression was unbearably grim and tiny. Visitors flocked to sit in Death’s Waiting Room, contemplating the stark reality faced by those on death row. Whoever designed it did get something right though - it’s a dead ringer for purgatory, or perhaps hell itself. And this is Linda Carty’s day-to-day existence.

Linda Carty is a British citizen, born on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts. After a complex and difficult life, including a history as the victim of rape and domestic abuse, she was sentenced to die by lethal injection for murdering her neighbour, Joanna Rodriguez. This sentence was borne out of the kind of criminal justice we like to tell ourselves doesn’t exist in the Western world - the facts read somewhat like the reports of a Soviet show trial.

Linda was named as the ‘mastermind’ in the murder by the three men who actively committed it, their inducement being that they would escape the death penalty for doing so. According to the Assistant District Attorney, the fact that her accusers were "an armed robber, a dope dealer, a drive-by shooter and another armed robber" only made their stories more credible - a naturally logical assumption. 

Her motive was, allegedly, that she wanted to steal Rodriguez’s unborn baby (of a different race than Carty herself) in order to pass it off as her own and save a failing relationship. Issues about the plausibility of this tale begin to arise at this point. But when you add the knowledge that Carty had done undercover work with the Drug Enforcement Agency in her area – and was, you might say, a tad unpopular amongst the neighbourhood’s gangland thugs – things all start to make sense. There is rarely a more powerful motive than the dual prospects of money and power, and Linda Carty had often been standing in the way of both.

I would like to think that no one would ever be convicted on similar evidence in a British court, but then again, this assumption is telling. It exposes a complacency and places a rather naïve hope that a criminal justice system which exists in a developed, democratic country must have some legitimacy. But leaving aside the substantive issues in this case, all the more frightening is the procedural circus that led to Linda’s conviction and sentencing.

No one ends up on death row because they have done terrible things, they do so because they have suffered terrible representation. And the crimes of Linda’s defence lawyer who, comfortingly, has had more clients put on death row than any other lawyer in the US, are numerous and extreme. As well as failing to notify the British consulate of her nationality (which would have ruled out the death penalty) and failing to spot obvious inconsistencies with the prosecution’s case (Carty’s alleged weapon of choice would have apparently been a pair of medical scissors which could only cut cloth), Jerry Guerinot only spent 15 minutes with Linda before her trial. His actions can at best be classified as complete negligence, at worst, as a wilful obstruction of justice.

And now, amidst a hopelessly flawed appeals process drowning in legal technicalities, and a society hell-bent on the destroying its criminal offenders, Linda Carty is right to pray for a miracle because, unfortunately, nothing else will do.

The death penalty discussion may be one for another day, but the mere fact that a woman living in a liberal democracy was able to wind up in Death’s Waiting Room on the basis of such a completely flawed case is utterly abhorrent. If we cannot expect the basic right to a fair trial in a country with which we are so inextricably connected, one must wonder how valuable such rights are in terms of international political capital. If it is these sorts of cases that result in a death sentence, how many steps are we away from the possibility of a similar fate?

Linda, a Christian, has a small request of God. She says, "If I have to die, I pray that my family will not look and not feel ashamed of their daughter, or their mother..."

What they should be ashamed of is the archaic and unjust system that is perpetrating Linda’s ‘death by homicide, performed by lethal injection by order of the people of the State of Texas’, and doesn’t even have the courage to write ‘legal murder’ on her death certificate.