Woman on Death Row for 30 Years Has Conviction Overturned After Paid Informant’s Testimony Challenged

The murder conviction for a Texas woman who’d been on death row for decades was thrown out last week after a federal appeals court ruled that she received an unfair trial in 1996 after being accused of murdering an 80-year-old man for money.

Brittany Marlowe Holberg had her death sentence revoked last week after the federal judge tossed out the 1998 conviction on the grounds that key testimony in her trial came from a paid informant, which prosecutors did not fully disclose to the court, according to NBC News, The Texas Tribune, and local KVII.

NBC News reported that Holberg, 52, remains in custody while a lower court decides how to proceed with her case. Holberg was convicted of murdering 80-year-old A.B. Towery inside his Amarillo, Texas, apartment on Nov. 13, 1996, after prosecutors alleged she followed him home from a local grocery store, tricked him into letting her into the apartment by asking to use his phone and then stabbed him 58 times.

Court records show officers found Towery “dead with stab wounds and part of a lamp in his throat,” according to the outlet.

The Texas Tribune reported that the key testimony in Holberg’s trial came from her cellmate, who was working for the City of Amarillo Police Department as a paid confidential informant. The informant recanted her testimony in 2011 after originally telling the court in 1998 that Holberg confessed to killing Towery for drug money.

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During the trial, according to the Tribune, Holberg admitted to stabbing Towery to death but said she did so out of self defense after the 80-year-old man hit her on the head.

However, prosecutors alleged Holberg killed Towery for money to support an alleged drug habit, using testimony from her former cellmate to support the claims. Holberg’s cellmate, Vickie Kirkpatrick, was released on bond the same day she provided police with her testimony about Holberg, according to the Tribune. The newspaper reports that prosecutors presented Kirkpatrick to the court as a “disinterested individual who ‘wanted to do the right thing.’ “

KVII reports that Holberg’s case drew national media attention and that she was featured on FOX’s America’s Most Wanted before she was later arrested in Tennessee.