A federal appeals court has tossed an Amarillo woman’s death sentence after it found that local prosecutors had failed to reveal that their primary trial witness was a paid informant.

With a 2-1 decision, the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals last week sent Brittany Marlowe Holberg’s 1998 murder conviction back down to the trial court to decide how to proceed.

Holberg has been on death row for 27 years. In securing her conviction in 1998, Randall County prosecutors heavily relied on testimony from a jail inmate who was working as a confidential informant for the City of Amarillo police. That informant recanted her testimony in 2011, but neither a Texas Court of Criminal Appeals or a federal district court found that prosecutors had violated Holberg’s constitutional right to a fair trial.

  • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    There is no reason for the death penalty. It does not serve justice. It does not act as a deterrent. It does not save cost.

    • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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      20 hours ago

      It would save money if we let the conservatives empower cops and judge and jury…

      It would also be horrible and create shadow governments and insurgencies but it would be massively cheaper.

    • venotic@kbin.melroy.org
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      1 day ago

      There is no reason to also keep wasting taxpayer dollars keeping murderers and worst criminals alive. People like you seem to be happy in doing that and actually believe they can be reformed. When, the large majority seems to disagree with you. You don’t have and never have had a solution to this. So what makes you think you’ve got a stance to abolish death penalties?

      All that your kind seems to do is just waste people’s time with your runaround logic. It’s tiresome.

      No, I’m done, I’m not going to hear more replies from people who I’ve exampled. There’s a reason things exist and you don’t want to accept that, fine, whatever. But you keep running around your own circular logic for all I care.

      • RowRowRowYourBot@sh.itjust.works
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        24 hours ago

        As all inmates have the right to a fair trial and every death penalty inmate appeals at every possible turn. This is 100% paid for by the taxpayer and makes executing people more expensive than housing them for their entire life. Any attempt to reduce this cost is met by an increase in likely unjust executions.

        Your view is essentially “the death penalty exists so it is right” which is not a logically derived opinion. I don’t think you should talk about other people’s circular logic while avoiding recognizing your own.

      • YoFrodo@lemmy.world
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        24 hours ago

        Abolishing the death penalty is not about costs or punishment. It’s about sparing the innocent a wrongful execution. As long as you advocate for the death penalty you are advocating for the murder of innocent people. No system is 100% accurate 100% of the time.

        The ONLY way to be absolutely certain that we aren’t wrongfully executing people is to stop executions entirely.

      • 4am@lemm.ee
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        23 hours ago

        Fuck are you on about, it costs more taxpayer dollars to execute someone and we fucking get it wrong all the time. Stop thinking with your feelings and get educated on something before you spout nonsense about it being “common sense” or whatever. It’s actually common sense to get rid of it!