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March 12 (UPI) -- State prosecutors withheld evidence favorable to Brittany Marlow Holberg during her 1998 murder trial that resulted in her being sentenced to death, a federal appellate court panel ruled. The divided Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals panel in New Orleans vacated Holberg's conviction and sentence in a 2-1 ruling Friday and remanded the matter to the Randall County District Court in Canyon, Texas.
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Holberg remains in custody while Randall County District Attorney Robert Love decides whether he will retry the case or end the matter. Holberg would be freed from prison if she is not retried.
"There is a reason Brittany Marlow Holberg has been on death row for over 27 years," Judge Patrick Higginbotham said in the ruling Friday, the Amarillo Tribune reported.
"The state denied her right to due process by keeping from the jury evidence favorable to the defendant," Higgenbotham said. "This suppression prejudiced her case."
Holberg, 52, was convicted of murder and sentenced to death in 1998 for the 1996 killing of A.B. Towery Sr., 80, on Nov. 13, 1996.
Prosecutors accused Holberg of committing or attempting to commit robbery of Towery while he was at his apartment in Amarillo.
Holberg was tried while she was 23 in 1998 and said she killed Towery in self-defense.
Court records indicate she was addicted to crack cocaine and resorted to sex work to support her addiction when Towery invited her into his apartment for sex, NBC News reported.
Holberg said Towery began beating her when they got into an argument and she stabbed him in the throat with part of a lamp, which caused his death.
A former cellmate, Vickie Kirkpatrick, testified against Holberg, who she said admitted to killing Towery while they both were jailed in the Randall County Jail in Texas.
Holberg allegedly killed Towery while trying to steal from him and use the proceeds to buy drugs and detailed her alleged crime during a jailhouse conversation, Kirkpatrick testified.
Kirkpatrick was a confidential informant for the Amarillo Police Department, which paid her thousands of dollars to make controlled drug buys and testify in related cases for several months before the alleged conversation with Holberg.
Prosecutors presented Kirkpatrick as a disinterested witness trying to do the right thing by testifying against Holberg, who denied ever talking about Towery's death with Kirkpatrick.
"The state did not disclose Kirkpatrick's work as a paid informant until after Holberg was sentenced to death," Higginbotham wrote in the majority opinion.
He said the Supreme Court previously ruled a paid informant only can testify in a case after prosecutors reveal that person's status as a paid informant, which did not happen in Holberg's case until after she was sentenced to death.
Kirkpatrick in 2011 recanted her testimony against Holberg and said prosecutors coached her regarding how to testify during the trial.
A jury must unanimously agree to a death penalty, but Higginbotham said it is likely at least one juror would not have agreed to capital punishment for Holberg if the prosecution had not hidden Kirkpatrick's status as a paid informant.
Federal Circuit Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan dissented and said Kirkpatrick's testimony only was a minor element of the case against Holberg.
"There's zero chance that a jury would have credited Holberg's laughable claim of self-defense or spared her the death penalty for slaughtering a sick old man," Duncan wrote in his dissenting opinion.
