A federal appeals court tossed Brittany Holberg's death sentence after it found that prosecutors failed to reveal that their primary trial witness was a paid informant.

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.

  • MegaUltraChicken@lemmy.worldEnglish
    23·
    19 hours ago

    That isn’t the flaw with the penalty, it’s a flaw with the poor decision making of the judges and everyone involved in the system.

    That is the main flaw, all of this relies on people who cannot make correct decisions every time. That’s why the death penalty can never be implemented without killing innocent people. You cannot remove human bias from the justice system, it has to be managed.