Brittany Killed A Senior With a Broken Lamp, Now She Might Get Off Texas Death Row

Brittany Marlow Holberg was a deeply troubled young woman in the late 1990s.

At 23, she was addicted to crack cocaine and prostituting to fund her habit. After a minor traffic accident, she found herself with no place to go- except the house of her former "client," 80-year-old A.B. Towery, Sr. of Amarillo, Texas.

What happened next would land Brittany on Texas Death Row for 27 years. Now, she has a chance to get off the Row, pending a trial court's decision.

According to court documents, the pair found themselves in a  "heated argument followed that quickly turned violent, leaving Towery dead with stab wounds and part of a lamp in his throat."

Sounds horrific, doesn't it? But did Brittany kill this elderly man to rob him, or in self-defense? That distinction matters in a Capital case- as the latter is not a crime eligible for death row.

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It didn't help Brittany's case that she fled to Tennesee, however, her defense argued that A.B. wasn't as frail as you'd imagine. They claimed that after the encounter, Brittany was "cut and bruised, bleeding from the head where Towery struck her and tore out clumps of her hair."

So how did the jury decide? Was it material evidence or potentially very flawed testimony?

According to the Texas Tribune, a federal appeals court has overturned Brittany's death penalty conviction after they found that "local prosecutors had failed to reveal that their primary trial witness was a paid informant."

The primary witness was a jailhouse informant who later recanted her testimony. Jailhouse snitches are notoriously unreliable, as they are highly incentivized to rat on bunk mates in return for lighter sentences or even material benefits.

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So Vickie Marie Kirkpatrick did just that- she testified against Brittany to have her felony charges reduced by Corporal Eddie Stallings of the City of Amarillo police. She was also paid to help with other cases. Vickie claimed that Brittany described the crime as follows:

She had stuck the lamp down Towery's throat because she got tired of hearing him make “gurgling” or “gagging” noises; that she initiated the altercation with Towery in order to get money for a “fix”; that Holberg thought the “fountain” of blood was “pretty,” “fun,” and “amazing”; and that Holberg would do it all over again for more drugs.

However, Brittany denied having ever spoken to Vickie while they shared a cell, and she described the incident very differently:

[Brittany]Holberg denied that she killed Towery for his money and drugs, but testified that she took the money thrown at her. The evidence is that high on crack cocaine, Holberg gained the edge and in the frenzy of the fight, repeatedly struck Towery, and in her own words: “I lost it.”

The state did not disclose to the jury that Vickie was a paid informant, so it is entirely possible the jury was swayed by a witness they thought was testifying out of conscience, not because she had every incentive to do so- her freedom and even cold hard cash.

In a 2-1 decision, the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals decided that Brittany's case should go back to a trial court to determine her fate.