At the time, the Newtons were having marital problems. Although they lived together, they were both dating other people.

On April 7, 1987, police were dispatched to their apartment complex on a report of a possible shooting. The deputy found the bodies Newton's husband and two children, each shot to death with a .25 caliber handgun. Newton and her cousin were at the location when the deputy arrived.

Earlier in the evening, Newton took a blue bag out of her car and put it in an abandoned house which belonged to her parents. A homicide detective later recovered the bag, which containing a .25 automatic pistol. A ballistics expert established that the pistol was the murder weapon.

Gunpowder residue was found on Newton's skirt. Newton, the primary beneficiary on the insurance policies, made claims on the policies following the killings. Newton maintained her innocence throughout, blaming the killings on an unknown drug dealer who was owed money by her husband.

Citations:

Newton v. Dretke, 371 Fed.Appx. 250 (5th Cir. 2004) (Habeas).
Newton v. State, Not Reported in S.W.2d, 1992 WL 175742 (Tex.Cr.App. 1992).

Final Meal:

Declined.

Final Words:

None.

Media Advisory

Tuesday, November 23, 2004

Frances Newton Scheduled For Execution

AUSTIN – Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott offers the following information about Frances Elaine Newton, who is scheduled to be executed after 6 p.m. Wednesday, December 1, 2004: Newton was sentenced to death in 1988 for murdering her 21-month-old daughter, Farrah Elaine Newton, at the same time she also killed her husband, Adrian Newton, and her 7-year-old son, Alton Newton.

FACTS OF THE CRIME

On the evening of April 7, 1987, a Harris County sheriff’s deputy was dispatched to an apartment complex at 6126 West Mount Houston in response to a report of a possible shooting.

The deputy found the bodies of the three victims inside the apartment. All three had been shot to death. Newton and her cousin were at the location when the deputy arrived.

Earlier in the evening, Newton took a blue bag out of her car and put it in an abandoned house which belonged to her parents. A homicide detective later recovered the bag, which containing a .25 automatic pistol. A ballistics expert established that the pistol was the murder weapon.

A forensics expert for the State established that nitrites were present on the skirt Newton wore on the day of the shootings. In the expert’s opinion, the nitrites came from gunpowder residue and were consistent with someone shooting a pistol in the lower front area of the skirt.

Less than a month prior to the murders, Newton purchased a $50,000 life insurance policy on herself, another on her husband and a third on her daughter. Newton, the primary beneficiary on the latter two policies, made claims on the policies following the killings.

Psychologist Charles Covert testified at Newton’s trial that based on a hypothetical scenario paralleling the facts in Newton’s case, there is a probability such a person would commit violent acts constituting a threat to society.

CRIMINAL HISTORY

Newton was convicted of forgery in December 1985 and placed on three years probation.

PROCEDURAL HISTORY

• 04/07/87 - Newton commits the capital offense of murdering more than one person during the same criminal transaction.

• 07/17/87 - The grand jury indicts Newton for capital murder.

• 10/24/88 - Newton is convicted of capital murder.

• 10/25/88 - A Harris County jury answers the special issues in a manner which results in Newton being sentenced to death

• 06/17/92 - The Texas Court of Criminal Appals affirms Newton’s conviction and sentence.

• 06/28/93 - The U.S. Supreme Court denies certiorari review.

• 08/26/93 - The U.S. Supreme Court denies rehearing.

• 04/26/96 - Newton files a state writ of habeas corpus application.

• 12/06/00 - The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals adopts the trial court’s findings and conclusions, and denies the writ.

• 12/06/01 - Newton petitions a Houston federal district court for a writ of habeas corpus relief.

• 08/29/03 - The federal district court denies the writ, denies a certificate of appealability (“COA”), and issues final judgment.

• 11/04/03 - Newton applies to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for a COA.

• 05/20/04 - The Fifth Circuit Court denies Newton’s request.

• 07/07/04 - The Harris County trial court set Newton’s execution for December 1, 2004.

• 08/16/04 - Newton petitions the U.S. Supreme Court for certiorari review of the 5th Circuit’s denial of COA.

• 11/01/04 - The U.S. Supreme Court denies certiorari review.

• 11/10/04 - Newton petitions for clemency with the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles**

• 11/18/04 - Newton asked the trial court for a stay of execution and appointment of counsel or, for a successive habeas application in the trial court.

Frances Elaine Newton (April 12, 1965 – September 14, 2005) was executed by lethal injection in the state of Texas for the April 7, 1987 murder of her husband, Adrian, 23, her son, Alton, 7, and daughter, Farrah, 21 months.

All three victims were shot with a .25 caliber pistol which belonged to a man that Newton had at the time been seeing. Newton claimed that an illegal drug trade/drug dealer killed the three.

The Houston police presented evidence that Newton's husband was a drug dealer and was in debt to his supplier. Newton maintained her innocence from her first interrogation in 1987 until her execution in 2005. However, three weeks before the slayings, Newton had purchased life insurance policies on her husband, her daughter, and herself. These were each worth $50,000. She named herself as beneficiary on her husband's and daughter's policies. Newton claimed she forged her husband's signature to prevent him from discovering that money had been set aside to pay the premiums. Newton was also found to have placed a paper bag containing the murder weapon in a relative's home shortly after the murders. Prosecutors cited these facts as the basis for her motive.

Two hours before her first scheduled execution on December 1, 2004, Texas Governor Rick Perry granted a 120-day reprieve to allow more time to test forensic evidence in the case. There were also conflicting reports as to whether a second gun was recovered from the scene; ballistics reports appeared to demonstrate that a gun recovered by law enforcement and allegedly connected to Newton after the offense was the murder weapon. A relative of Newton who was incarcerated shortly after the murders claimed a person he shared a cell with boasted of killing the family. Numerous individuals, including three members of the convicting jury, expressed concern over evidence that was not presented during the trial.

On August 24, 2005, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals turned down a motion for a stay of execution. It turned down another appeal on September 9 for writ of habeas corpus. It was her fourth application.

The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles voted 7-0 on September 12 not to recommend that her sentence be commuted to life imprisonment, despite evidence raising doubt about her guilt and a letter from her husband's parents asking that her life be spared. The same day the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit refused an appeal of her sentence. Her new attorney, David Dow, also asked Governor Perry for a 30-day stay to prove that Newton was wrongly linked to the murder weapon. The Supreme Court of the United States declined without dissent two appeals on September 13.

Execution

The execution was carried out as scheduled on September 14, 2005 by lethal injection. Newton struggled and thrashed, knocking out one of the nurses. Frances Newton was the third woman executed in Texas since the resumption of capital punishment in the state in 1982. The first and second were Karla Faye Tucker and Betty Lou Beets, respectively.

Like Beets before her, Newton made no final statement and did not have a last meal request. Over 30 protesters from the Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement, the National Black United Front, and the New Black Panther Party had gathered outside the prison. In addition, about 75 people protested the execution outside the governor's mansion in Austin. According to the results of a Public Information Act request submitted by Texas Moratorium Network to the office of Governor Rick Perry, 12,201 people contacted the governor asking him to stop Newton's execution and 10 people contacted him in support of her execution.

During the investigation of Frances Newton, the forensic crime lab in the Houston Police Department was also experiencing intense criticism for the handling of evidence. Michael R. Bromwich, a former U.S. Justice Department official, said the Houston Police Department and city officials "failed to provide the crime lab with adequate resources to meet growing demands" for at least 15 years before the exposure of problems in its DNA division.

Wikipedia.org

Newton executed for 1987 slayings

Associated Press - Sept. 14, 2005

HUNTSVILLE — Frances Newton was executed today 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 make eye contact with her family as the drugs began flowing. She appeared to attempt to mouth something to her relatives, but the drugs took effect. She coughed once and gasped as her eyes closed and her mouth remained slightly open. Eight minutes later at 6:17 p.m. CDT, she was pronounced dead.

One of her sisters stood flat against a wall at the rear of the death house, her arms raised against the wall and her head buried in her arms, refusing to watch. 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 group of hundreds that assembled in 1998 to protest the execution of Karla Faye Tucker, who was 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," LaGrappe said. He characterized her as the victim of a set of statutes 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. "To me, this is outrageous."

Two cousins of Newton's slain husband, who also watched the execution, complained that too much attention had been focused on Newton, and not enough on the three murder victims. "I wanted her to apologize, just to confess," Tamika Craft-Demming said. "I don't know if you can get any satisfaction.

"Justice is not to me served. If we saw some kind of apology, that would have been justice." Craft-Demming, who sobbed loudly in the death chamber, described Newton as a "mean and kind of evil-spirited person. I knew she was vindictive. None of these things have been talked about. "I did have a rough go in that room," she said of her experience in the death chamber, where she broke down in tears. "I'd like to say not one tear was for Frances. They were for the kids."

Without dissent, the high 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 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.

A September 14, 2005 execution date has been set for Frances Newton, 40, who was sentenced to die for the 1987 shooting deaths of her husband, son and daughter. Prosecutors say she killed her family in order to collect $100,000 in insurance. Newton claims a drug dealer was the killer. Her defense attorney says he wants tests run on bloody carpet from the crime scene that may exonerate Newton.

Texas governor Rick Perry granted Newton a 120-day reprieve just a few hours before she was to have been executed on Dec. 1, 2004, in order to give her attorneys additional time to investigate questions about the evidence used to convict her, but their efforts failed to clear her.

From the Texas Attorney General's web site: On the evening of April 7, 1987, a Harris County sheriff’s deputy was dispatched to an apartment complex at 6126 West Mount Houston in response to a report of a possible shooting.

The deputy found the bodies of the three victims inside the apartment. All three had been shot to death. Newton and her cousin were at the location when the deputy arrived. A friend of Newton's testified that earlier in the evening, Newton had taken a blue bag out of her car and put it in an abandoned house which belonged to her parents. A homicide detective later recovered the bag, which containing a .25 automatic pistol. A ballistics expert established that the pistol was the murder weapon.

A forensics expert for the State established that nitrites were present on the skirt Newton wore on the day of the shootings. In the expert’s opinion, the nitrites came from gunpowder residue and were consistent with someone shooting a pistol in the lower front area of the skirt.

Less than a month prior to the murders, Newton purchased a $50,000 life insurance policy on herself, another on her husband and a third on her daughter. Newton, the primary beneficiary on the latter two policies, made claims on the policies following the killings.

Psychologist Charles Covert testified at Newton’s trial that based on a hypothetical scenario paralleling the facts in Newton’s case, there is a probability such a person would commit violent acts constituting a threat to society.

From December 2004: Virginia Louis does not want to see her daughter-in-law executed on Wednesday night, but she said there is no question in her mind that Frances Newton murdered her family in 1987. "I know she's guilty; there is no doubt in my mind," said Louis, a 61-year-old retired North Forest school bus driver and mother of the man Newton was convicted of killing.

Newton, 39, is scheduled for a lethal injection Wednesday for the April 1987 murders of her husband, Adrian Newton, and her two children, 7-year-old Alton and Farrah Elaine, 21 months. Frances Newton has repeatedly denied killing her family, saying a drug dealer named "Charlie" may have been responsible.

She said her husband owed the man money. State and federal courts have dismissed Newton's claims, and for the family of Adrian Newton, the latest round of denials has been frustrating and painful. "My son didn't use drugs. Why does she keep saying this Charlie? Who is Charlie? There ain't no Charlie. She's Charlie," Louis said in an interview Monday.

The Texas Criminal Court of Appeals on Monday rejected Newton's 11th-hour appeal, and a similar effort remains pending before the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Her petition for a 120-day reprieve is also pending before the state Board of Pardons and Paroles. Prosecutors said Newton killed her family to claim $100,000 in life insurance money. Evidence at the 1988 trial showed Newton forged her husband's signature on life insurance policies bought several months before the deaths.

Prosecutors said the murder weapon was a .25-caliber automatic pistol that was found in a blue bag in an abandoned house near her apartment. A witness saw Newton hide the bag in the house. Newton said she had found the unfamiliar gun at home and removed it as a safety precaution.

Key evidence at Newton's trial included ballistics evidence linking the gun to the murder. Newton's attorneys have raised questions about the reliability of testing by the Houston Police Department crime lab, which have come under scrutiny in recent years for providing inaccurate evidence at criminal trials.

Newton has lodged numerous complaints about Ron Mock, her court-appointed defense attorney. Catherine Coulter, the attorney appointed to work with Mock, signed an affidavit last week agreeing with Newton's attorneys that she and Mock provided ineffective legal assistance. Prosecutors say state and federal appeals courts have thoroughly reviewed all of Newton's claims and have no doubt of Newton's guilt.

Txexecutions.org

Frances Elaine Newton, 40, was executed by lethal injection on 14 September 2005 in Huntsville, Texas for killing her husband and children for insurance money.

On 18 March 1987, Newton, then 21, took out $50,000 life insurance policies on her 23-year-old husband, Adrian, and her 21-month old daughter, Farrah. A policy already existed for her 7-year-old son, Alton. At the time, the Newtons were having marital problems. Although they lived together, they were both dating other people. Adrian's brother, Sterling Newton, was also living in their apartment.

On 7 April 1987, between 5:30 and 6:00 p.m., Sterling Newton came home. Frances asked him to leave for a while, to give her some time to talk with Adrian alone about their marital problems. Sterling left about an hour to an hour and a half later. At about 6:45 p.m., Ramona Bell - Adrian's girlfriend - phoned Adrian. Bell and Adrian spoke for about fifteen minutes. Adrian told Bell that he was tired and was going to go to sleep, but not until Frances left, because he did not trust her.

Alphonse Harrison, a friend of Adrian's, had seen him earlier in the day, and the two made plans to get together that night. Harrison phoned the apartment between 7:00 and 7:15 p.m.. Frances answered the telephone. When he asked to speak with Adrian, Frances put Harrison on hold and left him there.

Between 7:00 and 7:30 p.m., Frances Newton arrived in an automobile at the residence of her cousin, Sondra Nelms. Newton asked Nelms to come over to her apartment for a visit. Before they left, Nelms watched Newton remove a blue bag from her car and put it inside the house next door to Nelms'. The house was abandonded and belonged to Newton's parents. They then went to Newton's apartment. Upon their arrival, they found Newton's husband and two children dead. Newton immediately called 911.

At 8:27 p.m., Harris County sherrif's deputy R. W. Ricks was dispatched to the apartment complex. Newton and Nelms were present when Ricks arrived. In Newton's apartment, Ricks found the bodies of Adrian, Alton, and Farrah Newton. Adrian was on a couch, shot in the head. The two children were in their beds, each shot in the chest. Deputy Ricks found no signs of forced entry or struggle.

Later that evening, Nelms told a homicide detective about the blue bag and took him to the abandoned house. Inside the house, he found a blue bag containing a .25-caliber semiautomatic pistol. The gun was traced to one Michael Mouton, who told police that he had loaned it five or six months earlier to his cousin, Jeffrey Frelow. When detectives showed Frelow the gun, he recognized it and said that he kept in a chest of drawers in his bedroom. He also said that his girlfriend, Francis Newton, often did his laundry and had easy access to the gun.

On 21 April, Newton filed claims on the life insurance policies she had taken out a month earlier. She was arrested and charged with capital murder the next day.

A ballistics expert testified that the pistol found in the abandoned house was the murder weapon. He also testified that nitrate residue from gunpowder was found on the skirt that Newton was seen wearing on the day of the shootings. He testified that another possible source of nitrates was fertilizer. The state also presented testimony from Sterling Newton, Ramona Bell, Alphonse Harrison, Sondra Nelms, and Jeffrey Frelow.

Newton pleaded not guilty. At her trial, she testified that she found the gun in her home and took it out of the apartment as a safety measure. She said her family may have been killed by a drug dealer named Charlie, in the process of trying to collect a debt from her husband, a longtime drug addict. Newton had a prior felony conviction for forgery. She received a sentence of 3 years' probation in December 1985. A previous employer also testified that Newton was fired from her job for stealing money.

In October 1988, a jury convicted Newton of capital murder, for killing more than one person in the same offense, and sentenced her to death. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the conviction and sentence in June 1992. All of her subsequent appeals in state and federal court were denied.

Newton maintained her innocence in a death-row interview. "I was so scared and confused. Not only was my family dead, but then they're charging me with murder," she said. She and her appeals lawyers claimed that she received ineffective assistance from her court-appointed trial lawyer, Ron Mock. In a recent interview, Mock admitted that he was "burned out" at the time of Newton's trial and was not enthusiastic about her case. He said that the case was an uphill battle from the beginning. "I had nothing, really, to work with other than Frances' saying that she did not do it." Mock has been barred from accepting court-appointed capital murder cases since 2001.

Newton also said that the nitrate residue on her skirt was from fertilizer. In December 2004, on a previously scheduled execution date, Governor Rick Perry accepted the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles' recommendation to grant Newton a 120-day stay of execution so that the skirt and the .25-caliber pistol could be tested again. The skirt, however, had been contaminated after the original test. Retesting on the pistol confirmed that it was the murder weapon.

In their most recent appeals, Newton's attorneys claimed that investigators actually seized two or more guns as evidence and that one of them - not the one in the blue bag hidden by Newton - was the murder weapon. A week before her execution, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected the multiple-gun theory as previously weighed and rejected. The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take the case. The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles declined to grant a reprieve.

Do not execute Frances Newton! - TEXAS - September 14, 2005

The state of Texas is scheduled to execute Frances Newton on Sept. 14th for the April 1987 murders of her husband, Adrian Newton and children Alton and Farah Newton in Harris County. If executed, Newton would be the first African-American woman Texas has put to death since the state resumed executions in 1982.

Newton's case embodies core problems with the death penalty in the United States in general and in Texas in particular. Her trial counsel was egregiously incompetent, she has a strong innocence claim and her conviction rested in large part on the results of ballistics testing conducted by the now-discredited Houston Police Department's crime lab.

Furthermore, Newton has been denied effective representation at nearly every stage of her appeal and consequently, her case has never been thoroughly or independently investigated. In fact, on the very day her trial began, her attorney, Ron Mock, admitted that he could not provide the name of a single witness with whom he had spoken. Mock is well known in Texas death penalty circles; he has had more clients sent to death row than any other lawyer. Many of his former clients have been executed and he is no longer assigned death penalty cases because of his astonishingly abysmal record as an attorney.

Newton, who was 21 at the time of the crime, took out a life insurance policy on her husband, herself, and her daughter less than a month before the crimes were committed. This action led many to believe she killed the victims in order to collect life insurance benefits. Newton also was reportedly having marital problems with her husband which the state further concluded to be evidence against her. However, as Newton's current attorneys have pointed out, there is a complex and overwhelming array of facts and circumstances that call into question the integrity and accuracy of her conviction.

First, Newton was convicted of killing her seven-year old son Alton Newton although he was not covered by a life insurance policy. The state was not able to provide a viable motive for his death. She also allegedly killed her 20-month old daughter for an additional $50,000 in insurance benefits. While a problematic marital situation may serve as motive for Newton's husband's murder, the killing of her two children is still speculative and largely unexplained by the state.

Second, the Houston Police Department's crime lab, which conducted ballistics testing on the weapon the state believes was used in the murder, is now widely regarded as extraordinarily unreliable. Without the crime lab's ballistics report, it is extremely doubtful that Newton's case would even have gone to trial, much less resulted in a capital murder conviction and death sentence.

Third, the state presented conflicting evidence regarding the timing of the murders and the likelihood Newton was home at the time they took place. Based on what the state presented, it is highly possible that another individual could have been at the residence at the time of the shooting. The state's evidence does not exclude this possibility in any way.

Fourth, the state has not investigated the possibility that another suspect or suspects may have been involved in the murders. Police were in possession of information that Adrian Newton was known to be a drug dealer and was in debt to a supplier. Despite this information, apparently police never investigated the possibility that the deaths were drug-related.

Fifth, the only other physical evidence in the case was the presence of nitrates found on the lower part of the dress Newton was wearing. However, while the state argued that the presence of nitrates indicated gun powder residue, other possible sources include fertilizer and cosmetics. It has been established that Newton's toddler was exposed to fertilizer earlier that day. Furthermore, Newton's hands were tested for gunpowder residue the evening of the murders; none was found, despite the fact that gunpowder residue cannot be washed away or quickly removed from skin after a gun has been fired.

Newton was given a prior death sentence in December of 2004, however, Newton's clemency team took the unusual step of not asking the Board of Pardons and Paroles to recommend clemency in Newton's case, but rather recommended to Gov. Perry a 120-day reprieve so that more investigation can be conducted. They claimed that the evidence in her case was lacking and that her prior representation was shoddy. Gov. Perry agreed to the 120-day reprieve on the day of her Dec. 1 execution date. However, little has changed regarding the facts of the case and the state has set yet another execution date.

Woman set to die appeals to governor, top court

The Associated Press - Wed, Sep. 14, 2005

HUNTSVILLE - The gun inside 7-year-old Alton Newton's blue knapsack was the focus of the last-minute legal maneuvering by appellate lawyers Tuesday trying to keep the slain boy's mother out of the Texas death chamber.

Frances Newton, 40, is scheduled to die today for the fatal shootings 18 years ago of Alton; her 21-month-old daughter, Farrah; and her husband, Adrian, 23. Newton would be the 13th prisoner executed this year in Texas but only the third woman -- and the first black woman -- since the state resumed capital punishment in 1982.

Newton, who denies involvement in the killings, spent Tuesday visiting with relatives at the Mountain View prison outside Gatesville where the state's 11 condemned women are held. Gatesville is about 140 miles northwest of Huntsville, where she will be taken if the execution proceeds.

Her attorneys awaited word from the Supreme Court, where they filed an appeal Monday after Texas courts, lower federal courts and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles rejected their arguments that Newton is not guilty. Her attorneys also asserted that evidence used at her trial was improperly destroyed, that the gun linked to the slayings was not the only weapon recovered by police, and that she has not been a problem inmate, disputing trial evidence that she would be a continuing danger and deserved to die.

They also asked Gov. Rick Perry to invoke his authority to issue a one-time 30-day reprieve. "It's distressing because there are so many questions in this case," Newton told The Associated Press in a recent interview. "And you'd hope, I hope, our court system would want to know the answers, other than just saying: 'Oh, we believe we're right in this.' "

Newton and a cousin found the three bodies on the evening of April 7, 1987. Her husband had been shot in the head, the two children in the chest. Newton acknowledges hiding a .25-caliber handgun in Alton's knapsack at an abandoned house. Ballistics tests showed that it was the gun used in the slayings, but her attorneys argued that it wasn't the same weapon Newton left there, that police actually recovered a second or third weapon, and the guns were switched.

Newton said she found the gun in a drawer at home and hid it to keep her husband from getting into trouble. Adrian Newton had a drug history, and the couple was having marital problems. Both had been engaged in extramarital affairs. Newton's cousin told police about the bag, which she saw Newton conceal.

Officers didn't record the serial number or any distinguishing features and when shown the weapon at Newton's trial said only that it "appeared similar," according to David Dow, one of Newton's appeals lawyers. "When the state says Newton can be connected to a gun that has a particular serial number, that's just a flat-out lie," Dow said.

Prosecutors have termed the argument a smoke screen. "The fact is, the gun that was the murder weapon was the gun she hid," said Roe Wilson, an assistant district attorney in Harris County. "It was bagged by police and tagged into evidence. There is a chain of custody. It was the only gun recovered."

In December, the parole board recommended a reprieve for Newton so new ballistics tests could be conducted on the gun, and Perry agreed about two hours before Newton could have been put to death. In March, new tests confirmed the earlier findings, and Harris County officials rescheduled her execution.

Without Evidence: Executing Frances Newton

Another Texas death row case marked by official carelessness, negligence, and intransigence

Sept. 9, 2005

Unless the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles and Gov. Rick Perry act to stop it, on Sept. 14 Frances Newton will become only the third woman executed by the state of Texas since 1982, and the first black woman executed since the Civil War.

Unique in that historical sense, in other ways the Frances Newton case is painfully unexceptional. For there is no incontrovertible evidence against Newton, and the paltry evidence that does exist has been completely compromised. Moreover, her story is one more in a long line of Texas death row cases in which the prosecutions were sloppy or dishonest, the defenses incompetent or negligent, and the constitutional guarantee of a fair trial was honored only in name.

As Harris Co. prosecutors tell the story, the now 40-year-old Newton is a cold-blooded killer who murdered her husband and two young children inside the family's apartment outside Houston on April 7, 1987, by shooting each of them, execution-style, in order to collect life insurance. Newton had the opportunity, they argued during her 1988 trial, and a motive – a troubled relationship with her husband, Adrian, and the promise of $100,000 in insurance money from policies she'd recently taken out on his life and on the life of their 21-month-old daughter Farrah. And she had the means, they say: a .25-caliber Raven Arms pistol she had allegedly stolen from a boyfriend's house.

To the state, it is a simple, open-and-shut case, which requires no further review. "Her case has been reviewed by every possible court," Harris Co. Assistant District Attorney Roe Wilson told the Los Angeles Times in November. "She killed her two children and her husband. There is very, very strong evidence of that."

Yet despite Wilson's insistence, Newton's case isn't simple at all – and such "evidence" as there is, is far from strong. "The State's theory is simple, and it is superficially compelling," attorney David Dow, head of the Texas Innocence Network at the University of Houston Law Center, argued in Newton's clemency petition, currently pending before the Board of Pardons and Paroles. "As we will see, however, appearances can be misleading."

From the beginning, Frances Newton has maintained her innocence. She has also offered a plausible alternative theory of the crime – a theory that neither police, prosecutors, nor Newton's own trial attorney, the infamous and now suspended Ronald Mock, have ever investigated. Newton and her defenders contend that Adrian, Farrah, and 7-year-old Alton were likely murdered by someone connected to a drug dealer to whom Adrian owed $1,500. The alternative theory has much to say for it – among other things, it explains the lack of physical evidence connecting Newton to the bloody murders.

Lingering questions about the physical evidence against Newton prompted the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to recommend, and Gov. Rick Perry to grant, a 120-day reprieve for Newton on Dec. 1, 2004 – the day she was last scheduled for execution. Although Perry said he saw no "evidence of innocence" – legally, an oxymoron – he granted the four-month stay to allow for retesting of evidence contested by Newton's defense, including nitrite residue on the hem of her skirt and gun ballistics evidence.

But testing on the skirt proved impossible, because the 1987 tests had destroyed the nitrite particles, and Harris Co. court officials had stored the skirt by sealing it inside a bag together with items of the victims' bloody clothing – thereby rendering it worthless as evidence. The second round of ballistics testing, on the other hand, supposedly confirmed a match between the gun prosecutors say Newton used and the bullets that killed her family. However, that match may be fundamentally undermined – because there is no certain connection between the gun and Newton.

According to Dow, it appears that police actually recovered at least two, and perhaps three, .25-caliber Raven Arms pistols during their investigation of the murders – conflicting evidence that neither the police nor the prosecutors ever revealed to Newton's defense. Dow argues that it is virtually impossible to know whether prosecutors have been truthful in claiming that the gun that Newton admits to hiding on April 7, 1987, was the murder weapon. "How many firearms were recovered and investigated in this case and who owned them?" Dow asks in a supplemental petition filed with the BPP on Aug. 25. "How many records have been withheld from Newton's attorneys throughout this case?"

In short, there is now even more doubt about Newton's guilt than there was when she was granted the stay – distressing Newton's many defenders, among them Adrian's parents, two former prison officials, and at least one of the jurors who heard Newton's case. "We never wanted to see Frances get executed," Adrian's parents Tom and Virginia Louis wrote to the BPP on Aug. 25. "When the trial occurred, nobody from the [DA's] Office ever asked ... our opinion. We were willing to testify on Frances' behalf, but Frances' defense lawyer never approached us," they continued. "We do not wish to suffer the loss of another family member."

A Bloody Crime

In the months before the murders, Frances and Adrian Newton were having marital problems. They were each involved in extramarital relationships, and Adrian was using drugs. In an Aug. 30 Gatesville prison interview, Newton told me that in addition to smoking marijuana, Adrian had developed a cocaine habit. "He had told me he was using cocaine, but I'd never seen that, but I saw the effects of it," she recalled. "He was home later, he was irritable, less responsible."

But she and Adrian had been together since she was a girl, and she was determined to work things out. That was on her mind on the afternoon of April 7, 1987, when she and Adrian sat down and talked. "We had decided that we were going to get through this together," she said. Adrian insisted that he wasn't using anymore, so when they were done talking and Adrian went into the living room "to watch TV ... I decided to be nosy and see if he was being honest," she recalled. Quietly, she opened the cabinet where he kept his stash.

"That's when I found the gun," she said. Newton said she immediately recalled a conversation she'd heard earlier that day, between Adrian and his brother, Sterling, who'd been staying with the family. "I couldn't hear real close, but it sounded like they'd been in some trouble," she said. "I thought I'd better take [the gun] out of there because I didn't want it to be in the house ... I didn't want him to get into any trouble." She removed the gun, placed it in a duffel bag and took it with her when she left the apartment around 6pm to run some errands, she says. Newton says it was the last time she saw her family alive.

At 7pm, after a couple of errands, Newton arrived at her cousin Sondra Nelms' house, where the two chatted and decided to return to Newton's apartment. As Newton backed out of the drive, she saw the duffel on the back seat and realized she needed to hide it. With Nelms watching, Newton retrieved the bag and walked next door into a burned and abandoned house owned by her parents, and there (as both women later confirmed), she left the bag.

The women arrived at the apartment around 8pm, and didn't immediately realize that anything was wrong. Newton thought Adrian was napping – until she saw the blood. "As Frances walked around the couch and saw his upper torso, she immediately screamed and bolted to the children's bedroom," Nelms said in an affidavit. "Frances began to frantically scream uncontrollably. I could not calm her down enough to elicit the apartment's address."

Newton says she was shocked and dazed, but gave police as much information as possible – including the fact that she'd just removed a gun from the house. She told police about Adrian's drug habit, and that he owed some money to a dealer – which Adrian's brother, Terrence, corroborated, telling police he knew where the dealer lived. Police never pursued the lead. "To your knowledge, was the alleged drug dealer ever interviewed by anyone in connection with this case?" Newton's attorney asked Sheriff's Officer Frank Pratt at trial. "No," Pratt replied.

A bullet remained lodged in Adrian's head, meaning that the blood and brain matter would have blown back onto the gun and shooter – confirmed by a trail of blood found in the hallway. Police found no trace of residual nitrites (gunshot residue) on Newton's hands, nor on the long sleeves of the sweater she was wearing. They collected the clothing she'd worn that day. There was no blood, nor any trace of blood, on any of the items.

Which Gun?

The next day, April 8, according to trial records, police supposedly confirmed that the gun they had retrieved from Newton's duffel bag in the abandoned building – at her direction – matched the murder bullets. Yet Newton was not arrested until more than two weeks later. Newton says that Harris Co. Sheriff's Sgt. J.J. Freeze told her that police had actually recovered two guns; in a sworn affidavit, Newton's father Bee Henry Nelms says Freeze told him the same thing and added that Newton would "eventually be released." Nonetheless, Newton was arrested two weeks later – after she filed a claim on Adrian and Farrah's life insurance policies – and charged with the capital murder of her 21-month-old daughter.

The state's primary evidence against her was elementary: Newton had filed for insurance benefits, and the Department of Public Safety forensic technicians had detected nitrite traces near the hem of Newton's long skirt – although they couldn't say with certainty that the nitrites were not her father's garden fertilizer transferred earlier that day from the hands of her toddler daughter. For physical evidence, the state relied primarily on the supposed ballistics match to the gun Newton had hidden.

Yet in court Freeze was somewhat vague: "I believe we talked about two pistols," he testified. "I know of one for sure, and there was mention of a second one that Ms. Newton had purchased earlier."

There are serious questions about the prosecutors' timeline, which would have required Newton somehow to murder her family, clean herself of any and all blood traces and gunshot residue, and drive to her cousin's house – all in less than 30 minutes. And since her 1988 conviction, the question of a second gun has haunted Newton's case. The ballistics evidence was increasingly suspect in any case because of the recent history of the Houston PD crime lab, which has been repeatedly charged with incompetent, shoddy work, resulting in a number of exonerations and the wholesale discrediting of the lab, which remains under investigation. The lab's clouded reputation was one factor that prompted Gov. Perry to accept the BPP's recommendation to grant Newton a reprieve last winter.

Although subsequent testing supposedly confirmed the ballistics match, the search for the second gun continued. And in June, Dow argued in Newton's clemency petition, the truth finally began to leak out, and from the most unlikely place: the Harris Co. District Attorney's Office. During a brief videotaped interview with a Dutch reporter, Assistant DA Roe Wilson inadvertently confirmed the existence of a second gun. "Police recovered a gun from the apartment that belonged to the husband," Wilson acknowledged. "[It] had not been fired, it had not been involved in the offense, " she continued. "It was simply a gun [Adrian] had there; so there is no second-gun theory."

Wilson and her boss, DA Chuck Rosenthal, quickly retracted her admission. Wilson told the Houston Chronicle that she'd simply "misspoken," and Rosenthal accused Dow of fabricating the idea of a second gun "out of whole cloth." "I'm very clear," Rosenthal told The New York Times. "One gun was recovered in the case." On Aug. 24, the Court of Criminal Appeals agreed, dismissing Newton's most recent appeal. "The evidence in this case was more than sufficient to establish [Newton's] guilt," Judge Cathy Cochran wrote. "The various details that [Newton] suggests her trial counsel should have investigated in greater detail do not detract ... from the single crucial piece of evidence that concerns her: she disposed of the murder weapon immediately after the killing."

Dow and his University of Houston law students persisted, and late last month may have succeeded. In August, Harris Co. investigators provided testimony that police may have recovered at least two identical .25-caliber Raven Arms pistols. In separate affidavits, two police investigators recall tracing firearms recovered in connection with the murders. Officer Frank Pratt told one of Dow's students that he was assigned a gun found in the abandoned house, which he traced to a purchase by Newton's boyfriend's cousin at a local Montgomery Ward. He also discovered, he told student Frances Zeon, that the purchaser had also bought a "second, identical gun"; but he didn't follow up on the second gun, because "he felt there was no need to do so." Pratt said he'd written up a report on the gun – a report Newton's attorneys have never seen.

However, Newton's attorneys do have a police report written by Detective M. Parinello, who reported he had traced yet another firearm recovered in connection with the case to a purchase from Rebel Distributors in Humble, Texas, which he said also ended up with Newton's boyfriend. "The question arises: what recovered firearm was ... Pratt investigating?" asks the clemency petition. "Counsel does not have access to the Harris Co. Sheriff's Department's records in this case. A request made directly to that institution for all records in connection to its investigation of this offense was rejected."

From all this conflicting yet incomplete gun evidence, it seems reasonable to surmise that there is no way to know which gun was in fact the murder weapon, or which gun was delivered for ballistics tests in 1987 or this year. Since the prosecution relied so heavily on a weapon that Newton herself had delivered to them, the new evidence discovered by her attorneys completely undermines her conviction.

At press time, Harris Co. Sheriff's Office spokesman Lt. John Martin was not able to reach Parinello or Pratt for comment but said that a captain who worked the Newton case had said there was only one gun recovered during the investigation. Harris Co. DA Chuck Rosenthal reiterated that, "as far as I know" there was only one gun recovered in the case. However, he said that even if investigators had recovered multiple firearms, and even if each were the same brand and caliber, the fact remains that the weapon investigators recovered from the abandoned house, which was immediately "tagged" and "tested," matched the bullets recovered from the victims. "Let's say, for conjecture's sake, that you ran down 50 or 100 guns, all associated with the case," he said. "The fact [is] that only one fired the bullets and that we know where that gun came from."

Criminal Defense

As in many Texas capital cases, a large part of the problem with Newton's appeals is that her court-appointed trial attorney, Ron Mock, never actually investigated her case. If he had, perhaps he would've followed up the drug dealer lead or Freeze's reported comments about a second gun. Newton and her parents implored the trial judge to allow her to change attorneys, and Mock admitted to the judge that he hadn't talked to any prosecution witnesses, nor had he subpoenaed any defense witness. The judge granted the motion to remove Mock but he declined a continuance, leaving Newton little choice but to go to trial with Mock. "It was stunning," she told me. "[Mock gets on the stand and] says, 'I don't know anything,' and for the judge to just dismiss it ... it was stunning." (Mock has since been brought before the State Bar's disciplinary board at least five times on various charges of professional misconduct, for which he has been fined and sometimes suspended; he is currently suspended from practicing law until late 2007.)

The Harris Co. prosecutors' defense of the conviction has also worn thin, especially given Roe Wilson's supposed "misstatement" about the second gun. To Newton's mother, Jewel Nelms, Wilson's admission is no mistake. "I've known all the time that there was a second gun," she told Houston's KPFT radio last month. "So I want to say again, to Roe Wilson, I thank you ... very much for letting us know, indeed, that there's somebody down there that knows about the second gun and was willing to talk about it – even though I know it wasn't her intention to do it."

Frances Elaine Newton could soon be the first African American woman executed in modern Texas history despite resounding questions of whether she is guilty and whether she received a fair trial.

Almost half of those on Texas' death row are African American, yet they are only 12 per cent of the population. Newton is from Harris County, where the Houston Police Crime Lab has botched so many cases that even the police chief and a state senator have asked the governor to halt executions from Harris County.

What to DO?
New actions planned, new materials available.
1. Get and mail a postcard to Governor Rick Perry; distribute to people you know.
2. See Coming Events for more to do.
3. Be creative! Help in your own way. Call or write the media. Ask questions in public. Bring it up at church.
AUDIO & VIDEO FILES ONLINE

SCHEDULED EXECUTION: SEPTEMBER 14

*** URGENT *** LESS THAN 1 DAY TO SAVE FRANCES

NOW: e-mail multiple selected elected officials at ONCE !!! or

Download, sign, circulate and FAX the new PETITION TO STOP THE EXECUTION! or

PRAYERS FOR FRANCES, September 14, 2005 at the Astrodome, Kirby and McNee, 12:30-2:00 pm

The president of the AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION has written a letter to Texas officials calling for a STAY of execution! (Read the Letter) (RTF document) No more victims. PLEASE!