Frances Newton excuted: The struggle is far from over

Just days after the execution of Frances Newton by the state of Texas, her mother, Jewel Nelms, put the authorities on notice: “The state of Texas thinks that they can kill Frances and it’s over. Well, her execution is NOT the end but the beginning. We’re going to prove that she didn’t kill her children. We’re going to take on the DA and the Houston cops. I’m not going to stop until I clear her name. And then I will sue the police and the DA and the state of Texas for false imprisonment, for wrongful conviction and for the taking of her life.”

Frances Newton

Newton’s parents and sisters witnessed her state murder by lethal injection on Sept. 14. She was the first Black woman legally lynched in Texas since 1853.

As over 300 people protested outside the Walls Unit in Huntsville, Texas, the state put Newton to death without ever having heard new evidence gathered in her case and never allowing her a day in court with competent counsel.

Protesters from around the state joined with the National Black United Front, the New Black Panther Party, the Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement, the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, the Committee to Free Frances Newton and students from Sam Houston State University in Hunts ville. Demon strations also took place in Houston, Austin, Dallas and other major Texas cities.

When Newton’s family walked across the street from the prison administrative building into the death house at 6 p.m., the crowd chanted, “Frances” and then “Innocent!” over and over and over.

About 20 minutes later, when her family walked back across the street, the large, militant, multinational crowd screamed, chanted and cried as it became evident that Newton had, in fact, been put to death. A makeshift memorial was built on the side of the street with a beautiful photo of Frances with candles and incense burning. People vowed to continue the struggle to stop the death machine in Huntsville.

The members of the Committee to Free Frances Newton plan to continue to work to prove her innocence and to use it to expose the racist, arrogant nature of the death penalty.

“We know that these executions are lynchings—of Blacks, of Latinos, and of working class whites. The arrogance and racism of the government that we saw in New Orleans is the same that we see with the death penalty. They have such contempt for the oppressed. People with money are not lynched. We will use Frances’ innocence as one more reason to demand an end to this terror used by the rich,” said Njeri Shakur, a TDPAM activist.

The United States has executed 982 people since the death penalty was reinstated in the mid-1970s. Of these 982 executions, 805 have taken place in the South, in former Confederate states, and 349 have been in Texas.

Texas has nine more executions scheduled for 2005, and at least two of them involve men with supporters who say they can prove their innocence: Jaime Elizalde Jr. and Tony Ford.

Ford’s mother is in Texas from Detroit to visit her son. She will attend Newton’s funeral on Sept. 20. “I feel I should be there for Frances’ family. I know if my son is wrongly executed on Dec. 7, I would want people there for me,” Joyce Ford told the Back!” radio show on Houston’s Pacifica station on Sept. 18.