British grandmother Linda Carty has spent 10 years on death row in a Texas prison, though no forensic evidence links her to the murder of which she was convicted. How does the death sentence affect her and her family?
Like most grandmothers, it's clear what Linda Carty's favourite conversation topic is. "They're wonderful boys, my grandsons," she says, beaming a wide smile through the thick glass that separates us. "Jhori is six and Caden is four. They look after one another and they look after their mum ... I'm so proud of them." But then, quite suddenly, Linda's smile crumbles and her eyes fill. "I'd give anything to see them again," she says, soaking up her tears with a tissue. "I've never even cuddled them, you know. I've never felt their skin and I've never kissed their faces."
The last time Linda saw her grandsons was almost four years ago, when Jhori was a toddler and Caden six weeks old. They came to visit her in the same room I'm sitting in, the last place on earth anyone would want to see their grandmother: death row. Linda, who is a British citizen, was convicted by a Texan court of murder in February 2002. Her sentence was handed down a few days later: death by lethal injection.
Since then, things have gone from bad to worse. Appeal after appeal has been turned down and legally she has reached the end of the road: the next communication she expects from the district attorney will be her execution date. What is more – and as far as Linda is concerned, this is almost as bad – she's not allowed to see her grandsons any more. When they were younger they were able to join their mother Jovelle, Linda's daughter, on her twice-monthly visits. They were separated from her by the glass that separates every prisoner here from the outside world, and they were never allowed a kiss or a hug: but it was better than nothing. Then, suddenly, the prison banned the children from coming. These days, Linda's only contact with them is a five-minute phone call every 90 days.
Linda, who is 53, has always maintained her innocence. The crime she was convicted of was gruesome and harrowing. A 25-year-old woman, Joana Rodriguez, who was a neighbour of Linda's in Houston, was kidnapped by a gang of men, along with her three-day-old child. Joana was found dead in the boot of a car a few hours later; the baby was alive on the back seat. The prosecution case was that Linda, who had previously suffered miscarriages, had hired the gang to kill Joana so she could have the child for herself.
Linda's story, which she tells me now in the visiting room at Mountain View penitentiary in Gatesville, a five-hour drive from Houston, is very different. "I was nothing to do with the crime," she says. "I was an informant for the Drugs Enforcement Agency, and I lent my car to a guy I was marking for them. He was a criminal – a drugs trafficker – and I had to befriend him, so when he asked to borrow my car, I said yes."
Linda's car was used to kidnap Joana Rodriguez and her child and when the gang members were charged, they gave evidence against her. That meant they escaped the death penalty but, although there was no forensic evidence whatsoever to link Linda to the crime, she was convicted and sentenced to death.
Talking to Linda's supporters you get a sense of general disbelief that her case has reached the point it has. The recently arrived British consul in Houston, Andrew Millar (who has been to visit Linda and found her "a lovely lady"). The British lawyer and anti-death penalty campaigner Clive Stafford Smith says the defence during her original trial was totally inadequate. Linda's attorney, Michael Goldberg, who is representing her pro bono says he has "never seen a case that cries out for some justice as much as this one does".
The bottom line seems to be that while few people would claim Linda has lived a completely pure life, even fewer believe she is capable of murder. A representative of the Drugs Enforcement Agency said this quite clearly at one of her appeals. But the case has rumbled on for more than a decade and even when the chance of a reprieve seemed close, it never came.
The biggest problem, according to Andrew Millar, is that Texas regards itself as a nation-state, so even appeals for clemency from David Cameron or Barack Obama won't necessarily help.
The person responsible for Linda's fate is the Texas governor, Rick Perry, who earlier this year pulled out of the race to be the Republican candidate for the White House. But his record on clemency isn't encouraging: almost all requests for reprieves for condemned prisoners while he has held office have failed, and the list of executed prisoners includes several foreign nationals.
This makes Linda's case look bleak, despite her British nationality – and understandably enough, she's now playing this card for all she's worth. While she has never lived in Britain, she was born in St Kitts when it was a British colony – as a young woman, she sang a solo for Prince Charles during a royal visit to the Caribbean.
She got pregnant with Jovelle, now 32, while she was at college and raised her without a partner – and later moved to Houston with her daughter, parents and siblings, and started training to be a pharmacist. One night in the university car park she was raped, and later found she was pregnant: she gave the baby up for adoption, abandoning her studies along the way.
By then a single parent with no income, she says she was recruited by the DEA because of her Caribbean connections and knowledge of pharmacy. Being pulled into the murky world of drugs meant she landed in court several times and has a criminal record – but being charged with murder was far out of her usual league of misdemeanour.
Jovelle has visited the UK twice to try to galvanise support for her mother, and she says she is willing to do so again, children in tow.
Jovelle says neither she nor her mother's extended family – Linda was one of eight children and has relatives in Britain – is willing to give up on her. "She didn't do this crime, and we'll do all we can to have that recognised," says Jovelle.
As we chat, Jhori and Caden play with cousins in the cul-de-sac outside their Houston home. "We're a very close family, and the boys are surrounded by cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents and great-grandparents," says Jovelle. "It's just their nana who can't be here and now they are the ages they are, they are starting to wonder why. Jhori asked me the other day: 'Mummy, is nana in jail?' I said yes, and that's why you can't see her the way you see your other grandma.
"Their other grandma is here all the time and if things weren't as they are with my mum, she would also be a constant presence in my sons' lives. I'm her only child. It's more difficult than you can imagine to be in this situation. I carry on, for my children, but there are days when it just eats away at me and I can't really function."
Jovelle worries about the effect of Linda's sentence on her sons. Does she feel that what has happened to Linda has left her family, including her sons, with a stigma? "I'm not a victim-type person," she says. "And I hope they won't be, either." But there are days when she can't stop herself from imagining what it will be like if the worst happens. "I just have to keep busy, to keep it out of my mind," she says. "I think if it wasn't for my boys I'd have gone crazy by now. They keep me grounded."
Meanwhile, hundreds of miles away, in Mountain View prison, Linda is finding ways to keep smiling. "What I think about is what I'll do when I get out of here," she says cheerily. "The first thing I'll do is go to church, to give thanks to God for saving me. And the next is to go home to Jovelle, and I'll hug those grandsons of mine. I'll hug them for a long time, because we've got a lot of catching up to do."
For more information on the campaign to save Linda Carty, see reprieve.org.uk/events/savelindacarty/