Frances Newton Lynched by Barbaric USA

Posted on Wed, Sep. 14, 2005

Woman executed for Texas family slayings

MICHAEL GRACZYK

Associated Press

HUNTSVILLE, Texas - Frances Newton was executed Wednesday for the fatal shootings of her husband and two children 18 years ago, becoming the third woman, and first black woman, to be put to death in the state since executions resumed in 1982.

Strapped to the death chamber gurney and with her parents among the people watching, she declined to make a final statement, quietly saying "no" and shaking her head when the warden asked if she would like to speak.

Newton, 40, briefly turned her head to look at her family as the drugs began flowing. She appeared to try to mouth something to her relatives, but the drugs took effect. She coughed once and gasped as her eyes closed. She was pronounced dead eight minutes later.

One of her sisters stood against a wall at the rear of the death house, her head buried in her arms. Her parents held hands and her mother brushed away a tear before they walked to the back of the chamber to console their other daughter.

About 50 demonstrators chanted outside but the crowd paled in comparison to the hundreds who gathered in 1998 to protest the execution of Karla Faye Tucker, the first woman executed in Texas since the Civil War.

"She's back with her family, in her mind," said John LaGrappe, one of her attorneys, who met with Newton less than two hours before she was executed and described her as "strong and optimistic. ... It's her faith in God."

He characterized her as the victim of laws that denied her access to the Supreme Court and blamed state-appointed lawyers early in her appeals process for missing deadlines that barred Newton from raising legal claims.

"It's a sad statement about the judicial process," he said.

Two cousins of Newton's slain husband who also watched the execution complained that too much attention had been focused on the convicted killer, and not enough on her three victims.

"I wanted her to apologize, just to confess," Tamika Craft-Demming said. "Justice is not to me served. If we saw some kind of apology, that would have been justice."

Craft-Demming sobbed loudly in the death chamber. "I'd like to say not one tear was for Frances," she said. "They were for the kids."

Without dissent, the Supreme Court declined a pair of appeals about an hour before Newton was scheduled to be taken to the Texas death chamber.

The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, which last year paved the way for Gov. Rick Perry to issue a reprieve about two hours before Newton was set to die, on Monday unanimously rejected a request that her death sentence be commuted to life in prison. Perry rejected another delay in the execution Wednesday afternoon.

She also lost appeals in state and lower federal courts. Her execution was the 13th this year in Texas. She was the 11th woman executed in the United States since the Supreme Court in 1976 allowed the death penalty to resume.

Newton didn't deny putting a gun in her 7-year-old son's knapsack and stashing the bag at an abandoned house. But she and her lawyers argued the .25-caliber blue steel revolver she hid was not the one used to fatally shoot her son, Alton; her 21-month-old daughter, Farrah; and her husband, Adrian, 23, at their Houston apartment.

Newton all along insisted she was innocent, and the claim about the gun was among several in her appeal to the Supreme Court. She also contended her trial attorneys were incompetent and evidence at her trial improperly was destroyed.

"I know I did not murder my kids and my family," she told The Associated Press in a death row interview. "It's frustrating ... nobody's had to answer for that."

Prosecutors called Newton's appeals meritless, noting that a second gun never was recovered, that repeated ballistics tests confirmed the gun she hid was the murder weapon, and that any destruction of evidence was not improper.

"The unbroken chain of custody directly links Newton to the murder weapon," the Texas Attorney General's Office said in its filing to the Supreme Court.

Newton, accompanied by a cousin, found the bodies April 7, 1987. Her husband had been shot in the head, the two children in the chest, all with a .25-caliber pistol.

Three weeks before the slayings, Newton took out $50,000 life insurance policies on herself, her husband and her daughter. She named herself as beneficiary and said she signed her husband's name to prevent him from discovering she had set aside money to pay for the premiums.

Prosecutors said the insurance payoff was the motive for the slayings.

"It will take a serious labor movement to change anything. Please join the labor contingent at the September 24 peace march."

Ending racism in the USA will involve more than a labor movement. Racism is entrenched in the formation of the USA since colonial times. Slavery continues today as Africans in the US are incarcerated at higher rates and forced to work in prisons for below minimum wage. Ecological racism and nutricide is a daily fact of life for Africans living downwind of petrochemical refineries and McDonalds. The democrats and the unions aren't going to solve this, even if they try really hard and exert themselves by asking for campaign support. Banging your head against a wall will accomplish nothing other than getting a headache. One more phone call to the governor of Texas would have accomplished little if deaf ears occupy the governors office. Placing this burden on "the people" is unrealistic and results in feelings of inadequecy when we fail to save someone's life. Those in positions of power in government know they are outnumbered yet remain in control..

Reformist tactics of the labor movement seem to improve worker's conditions in series of victories. Yet these same labor movements harrass, intimidate and dismiss anarchists (IWW)as foolish romantics who could never actualize their lofty ideals. So we continue to compromise and vote for that slightly less racist European immigrant John Kerry to tell us what to do. Hey, at least he's a Democrat, maybe he would have intervened on behalf of Frances Taylor and saved her life?

Wishful thinking, but maybe someone will join the union today, eh?

a visiting barbarian intent on complete and total destruction of a racist US corporate government..

The reason the death penalty continues to exist in this country is because labor has not been organizing for the past 55 years, but rather, it has been promoting the capitalist, pro-death penalty Democratic Party, which is the twin party of capitalism with the Republicans, which exists to keep the Reds out of office by mouthing pro-workingclass phrases to get elected and then once in office, carries out the same capitalist agenda as the Republicans. When the capitalist class feels threatened with loss of profits, their primary concern, we win many advances, and of course, if we organize the workingclass to get rid of the private profit system, we win all victories. It is no accident that Michigan has no state death penalty; for decades it was a stronghold of labor. It is also no accident that the Old Confederacy still actively promotes the death penalty; labor is weakest in those states, as it is also very weak in California, where it is also actively promoted. The death penalty is first and foremost a class weapon of terror against the workingclass, and in the US, it is also a racist weapon.

We do not vote for Democrats if we support labor; we vote socialist, which in California is the Peace & Freedom Party. If you do not find a suitable socialist candidate on the ballot for a given position, then please skip that position and just vote on the propositions.

We will not get rid of all racism immediately upon the abolition of capitalism; we will however get rid of its material base, the private profit system and private ownership of the means of production. The only way labor can organize is as a class, regardless of color, and in that unity and solidarity, the stupidity of racism must be tossed out if the workingclass is to survive and advance.

For those of us who remember the civil rights movement of the 1960s, believe it or not, there has been a vast improvement in the average person's attitudes than since before the civil rights movement. The proof is in the tremendous positive response across the country from the overwhelming majority of people of all colors, including whites, to provide material support to the workingclass African-American victims of the hurricane that hit Lousiana, Mississippi and Alabama last month. That was not possible, not even thinkable, before the 1960s.

Labor was certainly part of the 1960s civil rights movement; Martin Luther King died defending the African-American sanitation workers who were engaged in a labor struggle in 1968 in Memphis, Tenn, and the unity of labor and civil rights continues today in many ways, including our annual Labor Heritage Festival held during MLK weekend in January in the San Francisco Bay Area.

As the workingclass organizes, it gets rid of the labor lieutenants of capitalism, who are most of the leadership of the current unions and puts an end to labor's promotion of the Democrat-Republicans.

This legal lynching was the first state murder of an African-American woman in Texas since before the Civil War. That is how far backward this country is since labor has not been organizing. We will continue to go backwards, all the way to barbarism, which we are witnessing at various times already, if we do not actively support and organize labor. I guarantee you that a large labor contingent at all the peace demonstrations will definitely be noticed by the capitalist class as there is nothing they care more about than their profits, which are by definition our stolen labor.

You certainly do not need to be a union member to join the labor contingent; most of us are not. There is also no promotion of the Democrat-Republicans in the labor contingent.

On September 24, 2005, please bring yourselves, your family and friends, and let's make this the biggest peace march with the largest and loudest labor contingent San Francisco has ever seen.

Life happens just once insofar as we can judge, for any actions to decide upon. Let's promote EXILE REGIONS, in lieu of near-city prisons or death sentences. There is MORE empty space in the USA than there is sq.mi. of infrastructure. Four giant regions each for a different level of crime/incarceration, with ONLY their periphery guarded, but HEAVILY, and this existential beyond-absurdity may end.

Killing the insane is the past time of some Texas sportsmen. Perhaps they will train their scopes on those who control D.C., which could be any evil being you can imagine.

I am abused by local government for trying to participate. The Bush regime or their cling ons tried to kill me in 2001.

If they draft your child, shoot the recruiter and his bosses.

Mobile Audit Club, videos of abuse and free music and defense systems designs.

On the bright side, she gets to see her kids again. On the negative, wait there is no negative.