MPs make clemency plea for Briton on Death Row
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Your support makes all the difference.Human rights lawyers and MPs are to make an 11th-hour plea for clemency on behalf of a British man due to be executed in Texas next year.
Jackie Elliot, born in Suffolk to American parents, has been sentenced to die on 4 February despite concern over the safety of his conviction for the rape and murder of a woman aged 19.
Last week 26 MPs signed an early-day motion calling on the Government to intervene in his case in the hope of persuading the Governor of Texas to stay the execution.
One of his lawyers, Clive Stafford Smith, a British-born Death Row lawyer, believes the police officers who gave evidence against Elliot at his trial were covering up their own wrongdoing. Elliot's legal team also alleges that scientific tests which could prove his innocence have not been done.
Elliot, 42, spent the first two years of his life in Felixstowe, Suffolk, when his father worked at the now defunct Brentwaters US air base.
He has been on Death Row for 15 years after being convicted of capital murder at a court in San Antonio in 1987 for raping a woman in Austin, Texas, and beating her to death.
If the sentence is carried out he will be the second Briton to be executed in America in less than a year. Despite a personal intervention by Tony Blair, Tracy Housel, a British citizen, was executed by lethal injection in Georgia in March. He was convicted of rape and murder.
Elliot denies he was involved part in the killing and rape. An appeal is currently being considered by the Supreme Court and if it failsthe only avenue left open is a plea for clemency.
Reprieve, a group which campaigns on behalf of Death Row prisoners and is opposed to capital punishment, claim his lawyers have been denied funding for some of the scientific tests which the group says could prove his innocence.
It is understood the British Government, which recently committed itself to a policy of opposing the death penalty in all circumstances is looking at ways of assisting Elliot.
The early-day motion, sponsored by Kevin McNamara, a Labour MP, calls on Parliament to "note the plight of Suffolk-born Jackie Elliot ... and that Mr Elliot steadfastly denies his guilt and insists he was the victim of police malpractice".
The motion urges that Parliament "affirms its support for the complete abolition of capital punishment; believes the death penalty to be a barbaric abuse of the rule of law, and constitutes inhuman and degrading treatment". The petition ends by calling on the Government to "make representation to the United States federal and Texas state authorities and to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to plead for clemency for Jackie Elliot.''
Since 1982 when Texas resumed the death penalty after a moratorium declared by the Supreme Court, the state has put more people to death, 289, than any other. In America this year, Texas has accounted for 29 of the 56 executions.
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