GROSS MISCARRIAGE OF JUSTICE

Race card earns vicious murderer a reprieve

The jury was 11-1, that is there were 11 white jurors and one black juror who sentenced Kimberly McCarthy, 51, to death for a brutal 1997 murder in which she beat, stabbed and robbed a 71-year-old neighbor to death in Lancaster, near Dallas. McCarthy, who is black, was scheduled to be executed Tuesday evening, but a state district judge halted the execution earlier Tuesday when her attorneys played the race card by making a last minute appeal arguing that she was the victim of improper jury selection. He postponed the execution until April 3.

McCarthy was first sentenced to death in 1998 for the murder of Dorothy Booth, retired college psychology professor, but the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned her conviction because investigators continued to interrogate her after she requested an attorney. She was retried in 2002 and again sentenced to death. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to review her case earlier this month, and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles turned down a clemency request Friday.

McCarthy would have been the 13th woman in the U.S., and the fourth in Texas, to be executed since a 1976 ruling by the Supreme Court ended a moratorium on capital punishment.

According to court records, Dorothy Booth was stabbed with a butcher knife, beaten with a large candle holder and robbed of a diamond wedding ring. Greg Davis, the former Dallas County assistant district attorney who prosecuted McCarthy, said she “quite literally took the woman, put her left hand on a chopping block of the kitchen and then used a knife to sever her ring finger while she was still alive. She took the ring from the finger that had been severed and continued the attack until she finally killed her."

Evidence introduced during both trials showed that Booth's DNA was found on a 10-inch butcher knife recovered from McCarthy's home and that McCarthy stole Booth's Mercedes, drove it to Dallas where she pawned the ring for $200, used Booth's credit cards at a liquor store and was carrying the victim's driver's license.

McCarthy was also indicted but not tried for the murders of two other elderly women. Blood DNA evidence 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.

If there was ever anyone who deserved to be put to death, it is Kimberly McCarthy. Postponing the execution of this subhuman piece of excrement constitutes a gross miscarriage of justice. I’ll be very surprised if she will be executed on April 3 because the reprieve is giving her attorneys time to file another round of appeals. And since it worked this time, you can bet they will play the race card again.