US state of Texas executes woman convicted of murdering family

Thursday, September 15, 2005

US state of Texas

noicon

This audio file was created from the text revision dated 2005-09-15 and may not reflect subsequent text edits to this report. (audio help)

Audio Wikinews

Frances Newton was put to death by lethal injection in the US state of Texas on Wednesday, September 14, 2005, for the murder of her husband and two children in April of 1987.

Her parents watched the execution in Huntsville where a few dozen demonstrators gathered outside to protest. Frances Newton was the first state-sponsored execution of an African-American female in Texas since the civil war. Newton is the third woman put to death by the state of Texas since capital punishment resumed following the end of a US national moratorium on the death penalty in 1982.

According to the police, the motive for the murders was collection of $100,000 in life insurance. Newton stated that a drug dealer committed the killings. Prosecutors say that gunpowder residue was found on Newton's skirt. Ballistics tests also backed up police claims that the pistol in question was the murder weapon. The defense rebuffed this by saying that police had, in fact, found two weapons. The defense also stated that the residue could have come from standard garden fertilizer.

In 1998 hundreds protested the execution of Karla Faye Tucker, the first woman put to death in Texas since the Civil War era. Rick Perry, the Governor of Texas, had postponed Newton's sentence to allow further investigation of evidence. Once the governor was convinced the state's case was solid, he allowed the execution to proceed.

Frances Newton of Texas was 40.

Sources

Michael Graczyk/Associated Press. "Woman Executed for Texas Family Slayings" — Yahoo!, September 14, 2005

Mark Babineck. "Texas executes black woman for murdering family" — Reuters, September 14, 2005

Share this:

This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable.

Articles presented on Wikinews reflect the specific time at which they were written and published, and do not attempt to encompass events or knowledge which occur or become known after their publication.

Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators.

Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.

Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.

The text of this article is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License