Kimberly McCarthy
/ AP Photo/Texas Department of Criminal Justice, File
(CBS/AP) HUNTSVILLE, Texas – Kimberly McCarthy, a Texas woman convicted in the 1997 gruesome murder of her 71-year-old neighbor, was scheduled to be executed Tuesday night. The execution would have made her the first female inmate in three years to be put to death in the U.S.
McCarthy, 51, was sentenced to death by lethal injection for the 1997 robbery, beating and fatal stabbing of retired college psychology professor Dorothy Booth. Authorities said it was among three slayings linked to McCarthy, a former nursing home therapist who was addicted to crack cocaine.
McCarthy will be the 13th woman executed in the U.S. and the fourth in Texas, the nation’s busiest death penalty state, since the Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to resume in 1976. Within that same time period, more than 1,300 male inmates have been executed nationwide.
Federal Bureau of Justice Statistics compiled from 1980 through 2008 show that women make up about 10 percent of homicide offenders nationwide. According to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, 3,146 people were on the nation’s death rows as of Oct. 1, 2012, and only 63 – 2 percent – were women.
In a final legal effort to spare her life, McCarthy’s lawyers asked Gov. Rick Perry on Monday to use his executive authority to issue a 30-day reprieve. They also appealed to Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins to withdraw or modify the execution date, citing his support that Texas adopt a law allowing death-row inmates to appeal on racial grounds. McCarthy is black, while all but one of her 12 Dallas County jurors were white.
State District Judge Larry Mitchell issued a reprieve for 51-year-old Kimberly McCarthy less than five hours before she could have been taken to the death chamber for the 1997 slaying of a neighbor.
Dallas County Assistant District Attorney Shelly Yeatts says McCarthy’s execution date now is April 3.
McCarthy’s lawyers contend the jury that convicted her of murder was improperly selected on the basis of race. McCarthy is black. Her jury was made up of 11 whites and one black person.
Her lead attorney, Doug Parks, said drug use was McCarthy’s downfall.
“I think when she’s off dope she’s probably a pretty good person,” he said. “I believe now, as I did then, that in the penitentiary, Kim would be absolutely no danger to anyone.”
Investigators said McCarthy called Booth to borrow a cup of sugar. When she came to pick it up, McCarthy attacked Booth with a butcher knife at her home in Lancaster, about 15 miles south of Dallas. Prosecutors said McCarthy forced the woman’s hand to a chopping block so she could cut off her finger to remove her wedding ring.
Blood DNA evidence also 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.
McCarthy, who denied any involvement in the attacks, was indicted but not tried for those slayings.
“She took the most defenseless, the most helpless people, people that trusted her, that she chose to attack,” Davis said.
McCarthy is a former wife of Aaron Michaels, founder of the New Black Panther Party, and he testified on her behalf. They had separated before Booth’s slaying.
McCarthy is among 10 women on death row in Texas, but the only one with an execution date.
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