(Elaine) NEWTON
Posted on 08/30/2004 9:39:18 AM PDT by Dubya
AUSTIN - A Dec. 1 execution date has been set for a Houston woman who would be the first African-American woman put to death since Texas resumed capital punishment in 1982.
Frances Elaine Newton, 39, was sentenced to die for killing her husband and two children on April 7, 1987. She was arrested two weeks later when she attempted to collect on recently purchased life-insurance policies.
Newton shot Adrian Newton, 23; Alton Newton, 7; and 21-month-old Farah Elaine Newton with a .25-caliber pistol she had borrowed from her boyfriend.
"There was never any question about Ms. Newton's guilt," said Roe Wilson, a Harris County prosecutor. "She was convicted and given the appropriate sentence."
According to prison records, Newton had separated from her husband about a month before the killings. About that time, she took out $50,000 life insurance policies on her husband, the youngest child and on herself. The older child's life had been insured previously.
On the night of April 7, Newton took her boyfriend's pistol with her as she visited the apartment where her husband and children were living. She said that she took the gun for protection and that everyone was alive when she left.
Kenneth Williams, her court-appointed lawyer, said Newton had a troubled childhood and a sometimes abusive marriage, which he will include in an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
"We are saying that these are mitigating factors that the jury should have been made aware of," Williams said.
He does not plan to suggest that Newton's race or gender should be a factor in determining whether she should be executed, Williams said.
Newton is one of nine condemned female inmates in Texas and would be the third woman executed in the modern era.
Houston's Karla Faye Tucker, who appealed her execution on the grounds that she became a Christian in prison and was rehabilitated, was put to death in February 1998 for a pickax slaying.
Betty Lou Beets, a Gun Barrel City woman condemned for killing her husband and burying him in a front-yard wishing-well planter, was executed in February 2000.
Two months after Tucker's execution, convicted murderer Erica Sheppard of Houston was in line to become the first African-American woman to be executed in Texas when she asked that a halt be put on all appeals on her behalf. Sheppard, convicted of bludgeoning a woman to death in 1993, allowed the appeals to continue after she was visited by the Rev. Jesse Jackson on Women's Death Row in Gatesville.
IN THE KNOW
Texas women and the death penalty
• Karla Faye Tucker, executed Feb. 3, 1998, for a pickax murder.
• Betty Lou Beets, executed Feb. 24, 2000, for killing her husband.
• Frances Elaine Newton, scheduled to die Dec. 1 for killing three family members.
The heck with her color; fry the b!tch!
Among the most heinous types of acts one hears about. Let the wheels of justice roll.
Sometimes abusive? So the rest of the time it was a good marriage? And this justifies killing your children? The article does not say but how old were the children.
(Elaine) NEWTON
Newton shot Adrian Newton, 23; Alton Newton, 7; and 21-month-old Farah Elaine Newton
Hey, wait a sec... I thought injections were for frying turkeys? :^P
Alton Newton, 7; and 21-month-old Farah Elaine
Money, money, money.
And, if I did the math correctly, she was 15 when she had the first one, and the husband was 16.
So--I guess Erica Shepard's appeal is ongoing. It must pay to have friends in high places--like the Rev Jackson
How does anyone shoot a baby let alone a 7 year old child?
21-month old? Man there are no words to express that. I don't know how I missed that when I read it the first time.
I wish the other states would do the same. We've got 4,000+ subhumans languishing on death row, nationally. On our dime.
It's a post-natal abortion. If you can kill 'em before they're born, why not after? It's just a matter of freedom of choice.
Since Newton and her husband were separated at the time, I think using the 'battered wife syndrome' defense will be a dismal failure.
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