Lisa Coleman was executed by the State of Texas for the murder of a nine year old boy. Lisa Coleman was executed by lethal injection on September 17, 2014.
Lisa Coleman was born in 1975 in Texas her family life was horrid where she was abused by her uncle and sent to live in a foster home. Unfortunately the foster home was no better as she was sexually assault by her foster parents.
By the time she was in her teens Lisa had been stabbed by a cousin and given drugs and alcohol by family members. At the age of sixteen Coleman had given birth to a child and had been to prison twice for selling drugs and burglary.
Lisa partner Marcella Williams would give birth to Davontae in 1995 who was born with developmental disabilities. Marcella would lose custody of her children briefly when Child Protective Services believed they were being abused by Lisa Coleman. Somehow the children would later be returned to the home after Marcella agreed that Coleman would have no contact with the children.
In 2002 CPS were again notified that the children were being abused, however when CPS arrived at the home the children denied being abused. It should be noted at this time Lisa Coleman and Marcella Williams were hiding Davontae from authorities and stopped sending the child to school.
In 2004 Marcella Williams would call 911 and report that Davontae was not breathing. When the ambulance arrived at the home they would find the nine year old child who weighed less than 40 pounds. Lisa Coleman would tell authorities that Davontae had just stopped breathing however doctors would later report that this was not true and the child died hours before the 911 call was made. Doctors would also found a score of old injuries and evidence that Davontae had been bound at his wrists and ankles.
Lisa Coleman and Marcella Williams were arrested and charged with the murder of Davontae Williams. The official cause of death was listed as malnutrition. Marcella Williams took a plea deal and Lisa Coleman would go to trial where she was convicted and sentenced to death.
Lisa Coleman would be executed on September 17, 2014 by lethal injection
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Texas death row inmate Lisa Ann Coleman was executed Wednesday night, the sixth woman put to death since the death penalty was reinstated in Texas.
Coleman, 38, was convicted and sentenced to death for the 2004 starvation death of her girlfriend’s son, Davontae Marcel Williams.
Before the lethal drug pentobarbital was injected into her inside the execution chamber at the state’s Huntsville Unit, Coleman expressed love for her family and thanked her lawyers.
“I just want to tell my family I love them, my son, I love him,” Coleman said, according to a statement released by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. “God is good … I’m done.”
She died 12 minutes after the drug was administered. Department of Criminal Justice spokesman Robert Hurst said Coleman’s time of death was 6:24 p.m.
Coleman was the 517th person to be executed in the state since 1982, the year Texas reinstated the death penalty following a 1976 Supreme Court decision that allowed states to resume capital punishment. She is the ninth person executed in Texas this year.
She was living with her girlfriend, Marcella Williams, in an Arlington apartment complex when paramedics discovered the starved corpse of a 9-year-old boy on July 26, 2004. He had been beaten, bore 250 scars and weighed 35 pounds at the time of his death, about half the typical weight for a child his age.
At the time of his death, Davontae was suffering from pneumonia. His cause of death was malnutrition with pneumonia as a contributing factor, according to the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office.
Both Coleman and the boy’s mother were charged with capital murder. But Williams pleaded guilty in 2006 to avoid facing the death penalty at trial. Child Protective Services records showed Williams and her son had been the subject of at least six child abuse investigations.
Coleman’s attorney, John Stickels of Arlington, appealed her death sentence based on how his client was initially charged.
In Texas, there has to be an underlying felony or second crime committed for a defendant to be charged with capital murder. Before 2011, those underlying crimes were murder, kidnapping, burglary, robbery, obstruction or terroristic threat. But in 2011, lawmakers added the killing of a child under the age of 10 to those underlying crimes.
In the Davontae Williams case, prosecutors used kidnapping as the underlying crime. Prosecutors presented evidence that Davontae had been locked in a pantry and kept from leaving his own home.
But Stickels says there was no kidnapping, at least not according to Texas law. His appeal to the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans based on that claim was rejected late Tuesday, and the U.S. Supreme Court chose not to intervene.
“It is wrong, it is child abuse, but it’s not kidnapping,” Stickels said. “I’m not saying she’s innocent and did not do something wrong. But it’s just not kidnapping.”
At Coleman’s 2006 trial, it was revealed that the two women bound Davontae’s wrists and sometimes locked him in a pantry. Stickels said that even though the law defines kidnapping as placing someone in an area with the intention of hiding them, it is not kidnapping if a parent places a child in a room to punish him.
“Lisa is absolutely innocent of capital murder,” Stickels insisted. “And if they execute her, they will be executing someone who is innocent of capital murder.”
Reports from those prior CPS investigations detailed how Davontae was found to be hungry. In 1999, he and his sister, Destinee, were placed into foster care after Davontae was found to have been beaten with an extension cord. Coleman denied beating him with a cord, and Williams told CPS that they had bound him with one. Davontae, born four months premature, had developmental disabilities, according to a clinical psychologist who examined the boy after he was placed in foster care.
The two children were eventually returned when Williams promised to stay away from Coleman.
In 2004, Davontae’s case was part of a state review of 1,103 child abuse cases in North Texas that was ordered by Gov. Rick Perry. The state’s Health and Human Services Commission Office of Inspector General found that CPS caseworkers failed 70 percent of the time to act quickly to protect a child in danger.
“It appears that CPS Region 3 [Dallas/Fort Worth] was performing at a minimum standard and often below standards,” Brian Flood, the commission’s inspector general at the time, said in his report to the governor. “When abuse or neglect was indicated in the file, only 30 percent of the time did CPS caseworkers implement the appropriate safety steps for the short term protection of the child.
https://www.texastribune.org/2014/09/17/lisa-ann-coleman-sixth-texas-woman-face-execution/
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Lisa Coleman was executed for the murder of a 9 year old boy
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Lisa Coleman was executed on September 17, 2014
