A federal appeals court tossed the murder conviction against a Texas woman sitting on death row for more than a quarter century ruling she’d been unjustly convicted on the basis of tainted testimony from a paid jailhouse informant.
Brittany Marlowe Holberg, 52, remains behind bars at the Patrick L. O’Daniel Unit in Gatesville following the Nov. 13, 1996 slaying of 80-year-old A.B. Towery St. in Amarillo.
Holberg had turned to sex work to support a crack cocaine habit when she got into a heated argument with her customer Towery at his home. Towery was found “dead with stab wounds and part of a lamp in his throat,” according to court records.
Holberg had always maintained that she killed Towery in self-defense after he started beating her.
But at trial, prosecutors brought Holberg’s cellmate Vickie Marie Kirkpatrick to the stand, who testified that the accused killer confided that she allegedly murdered Towery for the money, court records showed. Holberg denied ever speaking to Kirkpatrick about the Towery slaying.
Holberg, defense lawyers and the jury “had no knowledge that Kirkpatrick was a confidential informant” for Amarillo police, the court said.
“At the time of Holberg’s trial, the State knew about Kirkpatrick’s confidential informant work for the Amarillo police but presented her to the Amarillo jury as a disinterested individual who ‘wanted to do the right thing’ and was attempting to be ‘as truthful . . . and complete as [she] could be[.],’ ” according to Judge Patrick E. Higginbotham, writing for the majority in this Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that was published on Friday.
“The State did not disclose Kirkpatrick’s work as a paid informant until after Holberg was sentenced to death. Holberg’s counsel’s cross-examination of Kirkpatrick spanned only six pages of the trial transcript, a reality that speaks volumes.”
Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan, writing in dissent, argued that Kirkpatrick’s testimony played only a small role in the case.
“So, even had Kirkpatrick been impeached, there’s zero chance that a jury would have credited Holberg’s laughable claim of self-defense or spared her the death penalty for slaughtering a sick old man,” Duncan wrote.
The appellate court ruling kicks the case back down to the trial court and Randall County District Attorney Robert Love, previously a prosecutor on this case, could not be immediately reached for comment Wednesday on how the case would proceed going forward.
Holberg’s appellate attorneys also could not be immediately reached for comment on Wednesday.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the constitutionality of capital punishment in 1976, Texas has put 593 inmates to death.
Lisa Coleman, 38, was the last woman put to death in Texas, via a lethal dose of pentobarbital on Sept. 17. 2014. She had been convicted of the starvation and torture death of her girlfriend’s 9-year-old son.