Suzanne Basso was executed by the State of Texas for the murder of a mentally disabled man. Suzanne Basso would be executed by lethal injection on February 5, 2014
Suzanne Basso was born May 15, 1954 in New York State. Her maiden name was Suzanne Burns
Suzanne Basso was married in the early 1970’s to a former Marine who would later be arrested for molesting their daughter
Suzanne Basso would move and be romantically involved with a man named Carmen Basso. Suzanne who did not divorce her first husband would take his last name. Carmen would die in 1997 from natural causes.
Suzanne would meet Buddy Musso who was living in an assisted living home and the two would start a long distance relationship. Soon after Buddy would move to Houston to be with Basso.
Suzanne along with her son James O’Malley, Bernice Ahrens Miller and her children, Craig and Hope Ahrens, and Hope’s fiancé, Terence Singleton all lived in the residence when Buddy Musso moved in. Reports indicate from the moment he moved in he was treated like a slave and abused by the people in the home. Two weeks after his arrival Buddy Musso would be brutally tortured and murdered.
Suzanne Basso would be convicted and sentenced to death. As the alleged ringleader she received the most severe sentence. Suzanne Basso would be executed by lethal injection on February 5, 2014
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Suzanne Basso became the fourteenth woman to be executed in the US in the modern era after a last-minute appeal to the Supreme Court failed on Wednesday.
The 59-year-old former seamstress was put to death by lethal injection at the Texas state penitentiary in Huntsville, near Houston.
She is the 510th person to be executed in Texas, the nation’s most-active death penalty state, since America restored the death penalty in 1976. Of those, 505 were men.
Basso was the first female inmate executed in the US since Kimberly McCarthy was put to death in Texas last June. Only four women have been executed nationwide since 2002 – three in Texas, which accounts for more than a third of the total number of prisoners executed in the US.
Basso declined to make a final statement and was pronounced dead at 6.26pm local time, eleven minutes after the lethal dose of pentobarbital was administered, Associated Press reported.
Basso’s lawyer, Winston Cochran, asked the Supreme Court to review Texas’s criteria for assessing the mental health of prisoners sentenced to death.
In earlier appeals to state and federal courts, Cochran argued that Basso was delusional and did not meet the standard of mental competency required for an execution to proceed.
However, last month a judge in Houston ruled that Basso was competent enough to be executed. Cochran also contended that she had not received a fair trial. He said that no mitigating evidence was presented, the testimony of a medical examiner was questionable and no testimony or evidence showed that she personally killed Musso or proves exactly how he died.
Originally from New York, Basso was found guilty of the 1998 murder of 59-year-old Louis “Buddy” Musso.
According to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, she lured the mentally-disabled man from New Jersey to Texas under the pretence that she would marry him. But she the ringleader of a group who tortured and killed him by kicking and beating him with belts, baseball bats and steel-toed boots. He was found by a road in a Houston suburb with extensive injuries.
Basso’s five co-defendants, including her son, were convicted of involvement in Musso’s killing but not sentenced to death. At the trial in 1999 it was suggested that Basso hoped to cash in on his life insurance payout.
Women account for about 10% of murder arrests but only represent 2.1% of death sentences imposed at trial and less than 1% of completed executions, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
There are now eight women on Texas’ death row, including Linda Carty, a British citizen born on the Caribbean island of St Kitts.
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.
Marilyn Plantz was executed by the State of Oklahoma for the murder of her husband. Marilyn Plantz would be executed by lethal injection on May 1, 2001
Marilyn Plantz and her husband Jim Plantz had just recently moved to Midwest City Oklahoma and soon after Marilyn began dating a younger man named William Clifford Bryson. Soon the pair began planning the murder of Jim Plantz to collect the insurance money.
On August 26, 1988 William Clifford Bryson and an accomplice Clinton McKimble would ambush Jim Plantz when he returned from work with baseball bats. Plantz would be forced into a vehicle and driven to a remote location. The plan was to stick a rag into the vehicle’s gas tank and set it on fire however this did not work so Jim Plantz was doused with gasoline and set on fire.
It would not take police long to figure out what happened and all three were arrested and charged with the murder of Jim Plantz
Marilyn Plantz was convicted and sentenced to death. On May 1, 2001 Marilyn Plantz was executed by lethal injection
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A 40-year-old mother of two was executed Tuesday for her role in the 1988 murder of her husband for insurance money.
Marilyn Kay Plantz was pronounced dead at 9:11 p.m. from a lethal dose of drugs at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester. She was the second woman executed in Oklahoma since statehood.
The first woman, Wanda Jean Allen, was put to death on Jan. 11. Marilyn Plantz was convicted of having her lover, William Clifford Bryson, and accomplice Clinton McKimble kill her husband.
Bryson was executed in June. McKimble received a life sentence in exchange for his testimony against Plantz and Bryson.
Strapped to a guerney, Plantz thanked her family and the seven people who witnessed the execution for her. They included three cousins, several spiritual advisers, an attorney and an investigator.
“I want to tell all of my family that I love them very much, especially Trina and Chris . . .,” Plantz said, referring to her two children, who did not attend. “What God has given me is love and I have overcome the world.
“And I just want y’all to know that nothing, absolutely nothing, can separate us from the love of God. And if y’all want to see me again, you must be born again.”
After the execution began, Plantz made several snorting sounds and then fell quiet. She was pronounced dead a short time later.
Jim Plantz, 33, worked nights as a pressman at The Daily Oklahoman in Oklahoma City. Bryson and McKimble ambushed him with his 6-year-old son’s baseball bats at the couple’s Midwest City home when he returned from work on Aug. 26, 1988. Plantz was taken to a remote location and he and his pickup were set on fire to make it look accidental.
Authorities said Marilyn Plantz hoped to collect on a $300,000 life insurance policy, although she had said she was unaware that her husband had a policy.
Marilyn Plantz was the 124th inmate executed in Oklahoma history and the 11th this year.
Jim Plantz’s family members supported the execution and 15 witnessed on his behalf.
But Marilyn Plantz’s death by injection would not satisfy them, family members said shortly before her sentence was carried out.
“I feel like the punishment should fit the crime, but it won’t,” said Karen Lowery, Jim Plantz’s sister. Lethal injection did not compare to the horror of her brother being burned alive, she said.
“She’s just going to go to sleep tonight,” Lowery said.
Relatives said the couple appeared to have a good relationship. After they moved to Midwest City, Plantz met Bryson and the two later planned the killing.
According to police, Jim Plantz was carrying a bag of groceries when he arrived home about 4 a.m. Bryson and McKimble attacked him as his children, ages 9 and 6, slept in a nearby room.
Bryson drove the truck with Jim Plantz laying in the seat beside him to a remote road that could be a possible route home from work. McKimble followed in a car.
They placed Jim Plantz behind the wheel of the pickup and McKimble stuffed a rag in the gas tank and lit it. But the pickup failed to explode, and Bryson then doused Plantz and set him on fire.
As they drove away, McKimble said he looked back and saw Plantz raise up in the seat while flames shot out from the vehicle.
Back at the house, Marilyn Plantz tried to clean up the blood and placed a rug over the blood stains on the floor.
“It’s just tragic, no matter how you look at it,” said Clovis Plantz, Jim Plantz’s brother.
At her trial, jurors found two aggravating circumstances that warranted the death penalty: the murder was committed for remuneration and it was especially heinous, atrocious or cruel.
Marilyn Plantz’s grown daughter, Trina Plantz Wells, opposed her execution. The mother and daughter recently reconciled.
Her son, Chris Plantz, also visited her. Plantz said she converted to Christianity and said having her children visit was an answer to prayer.
Her last meal was served Monday. She requested one chicken taco salad, one Mexican pizza, two enchiritos, two chicken soft tacos, one order of cinnamon twists, one piece of pecan pie and two cans of Coca-Cola.
Two other executions are scheduled for May. Terrance A. James is scheduled to be executed on May 22 for a 1983 Muskogee County killing.
The execution for Vincent Allen Johnson is set for May 29 for a 1991 Pittsburg County murder.
A 40-year-old mother of two was executed Tuesday for her role in the 1988 murder of her husband for insurance money.
Marilyn Plantz was pronounced dead at 9:11 p.m. from a lethal dose of drugs at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester. She was the second woman executed in Oklahoma since statehood.
The first woman, Wanda Jean Allen, was put to death on Jan. 11. Marilyn Plantz was convicted of having her lover, William Clifford Bryson, and accomplice Clinton McKimble kill her husband.
Bryson was executed in June. McKimble received a life sentence in exchange for his testimony against Plantz and Bryson.
Strapped to a guerney, Marilyn Plantz thanked her family and the seven people who witnessed the execution for her. They included three cousins, several spiritual advisers, an attorney and an investigator.
“I want to tell all of my family that I love them very much, especially Trina and Chris . . .,” Plantz said, referring to her two children, who did not attend. “What God has given me is love and I have overcome the world.
“And I just want y’all to know that nothing, absolutely nothing, can separate us from the love of God. And if y’all want to see me again, you must be born again.”
After the execution began, Marilyn Plantz made several snorting sounds and then fell quiet. She was pronounced dead a short time later.
Jim Plantz, 33, worked nights as a pressman at The Daily Oklahoman in Oklahoma City. Bryson and McKimble ambushed him with his 6-year-old son’s baseball bats at the couple’s Midwest City home when he returned from work on Aug. 26, 1988. Plantz was taken to a remote location and he and his pickup were set on fire to make it look accidental.
Authorities said Marilyn Plantz hoped to collect on a $300,000 life insurance policy, although she had said she was unaware that her husband had a policy.
Marilyn Plantz was the 124th inmate executed in Oklahoma history and the 11th this year.
Jim Plantz’s family members supported the execution and 15 witnessed on his behalf.
But Marilyn Plantz’s death by injection would not satisfy them, family members said shortly before her sentence was carried out.
“I feel like the punishment should fit the crime, but it won’t,” said Karen Lowery, Jim Plantz’s sister. Lethal injection did not compare to the horror of her brother being burned alive, she said.
“She’s just going to go to sleep tonight,” Lowery said.
Relatives said the couple appeared to have a good relationship. After they moved to Midwest City, Marilyn Plantz met Bryson and the two later planned the killing.
According to police, Jim Plantz was carrying a bag of groceries when he arrived home about 4 a.m. Bryson and McKimble attacked him as his children, ages 9 and 6, slept in a nearby room.
Bryson drove the truck with Jim Plantz laying in the seat beside him to a remote road that could be a possible route home from work. McKimble followed in a car.
They placed Jim Plantz behind the wheel of the pickup and McKimble stuffed a rag in the gas tank and lit it. But the pickup failed to explode, and Bryson then doused Plantz and set him on fire.
As they drove away, McKimble said he looked back and saw Plantz raise up in the seat while flames shot out from the vehicle.
Back at the house, Marilyn Plantz tried to clean up the blood and placed a rug over the blood stains on the floor.
“It’s just tragic, no matter how you look at it,” said Clovis Plantz, Jim Plantz’s brother.
At her trial, jurors found two aggravating circumstances that warranted the death penalty: the murder was committed for remuneration and it was especially heinous, atrocious or cruel.
Marilyn Plantz’s grown daughter, Trina Plantz Wells, opposed her execution. The mother and daughter recently reconciled.
Her son, Chris Plantz, also visited her. Plantz said she converted to Christianity and said having her children visit was an answer to prayer.
Marilyn Plantz last meal was served Monday. She requested one chicken taco salad, one Mexican pizza, two enchiritos, two chicken soft tacos, one order of cinnamon twists, one piece of pecan pie and two cans of Coca-Cola.
Two other executions are scheduled for May. Terrance A. James is scheduled to be executed on May 22 for a 1983 Muskogee County killing.
The execution for Vincent Allen Johnson is set for May 29 for a 1991 Pittsburg County murder.
Wanda Jean Allen was executed by the State of Oklahoma for the murder of her long term girlfriend. Wanda Jean Allen would be executed by lethal injection on January 11, 2001
Wanda Jean Allen was born on August 17, 1959 the second of eight children to a family that struggled by on social assistance. When Wanda Jean was twelve years old she was hit by a truck and knocked unconscious and two years later she was stabbed in the temple.
Wanda Jean Allen whose IQ was reported at 69 had a significant amount of brain damage from the two traumatic incidents. By the age of 17 Wanda Jean would drop out of high school.
Wanda Jean Allen was living with a girlfriend in 1981 when she would fatally shoot the other woman. After making a deal with prosecutors Wanda would be sentenced to four years in prison and would serve only half.
In 1988 Wanda Jean Allen was living with Gloria Jean Leathers, the two women had met in prison and their relationship was very rocky. In December of 1988 Wanda Jean and Gloria were involved in an argument at a grocery store that was broken up by a police officer. While Gloria and her mother were heading towards a police station to file a restraining order Wanda Jean would jump out and shot Leathers in the stomach, Gloria would die three days later in hospital.
At trial Wanda Jean Allen lawyers tried to get their client off on self defense pointing to Leathers criminal history that showed she had stabbed a woman to death in 1979. Unfortunately Wanda Jean Allen history also had a murder in it as well and the jury would convict and sentenced her to death.
Wanda Jean Allen would spend twelve years on death row before her execution was carried out on January 11, 2001 by lethal injection
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On Jan. 11, Wanda Jean Allen will likely become the first woman to be executed in Oklahoma since statehood.
She hopes that the state Pardon and Parole Board and Gov. Frank Keating will commute her sentence to life without parole. But if that doesn’t happen, the 41-year-old says she is at peace.
“I have peace right here,” she says, tapping her chest. “And as long as I am all right with Him, I am not afraid of what man can do to me.”
Her victim and one-time lover, Gloria Jean Leathers, died four days after being shot at close range in 1988 by Allen in front of the Village Police Station in Oklahoma City.
“I couldn’t tell you what was happening as far as mentally,” Allen said from behind the glass that separates visitors from inmates at the Mabel Bassett Correctional Center in Oklahoma City. “I was there physically, but not mentally there. But I know it was a tragic accident that day.”
Wanda Jean Allen said she and Leathers were both out of control.
Leathers had called her mother to pick her up from the house where she and Allen lived. After packing her belongings, Leathers and her mother went to the police station to file a compliant against Allen.
Allen followed Leathers and shot her. Leathers’ mother, Ruby Wilson of Edmond, witnessed the killing.
On Oct. 13, Ruby Wilson met with her daughter’s killer.
“I wanted to tell her how sorry I was for taking her daughter’s life. And I know there is no greater love than a mother’s love for a child because I have a mother as well. And I asked for her forgiveness. She forgave me. We prayed together. And I let her know I loved her for coming that day.”
Leathers and Allen met in prison. Allen was serving a 4-year sentence for manslaughter. On June 29, 1981, at a motel in Oklahoma City, Allen shot to death Detra Pettus following an argument with Pettus’ boyfriend.
“We was friends,” Allen said of Pettus. “We grew up together. We lived in the same neighborhood. We had mutual friends.
While some prosecutors say that Allen and Leathers had a relationship in prison, Allen said that was not the case.
Wanda Jean Allen was released from prison before Leathers. When Leathers got out, she called Allen.
“She didn’t have a place to stay,” Allen said. “She and her family were having problems. I allowed her to come and live with me because I know how hard it is when you get out.
“By me being locked up, I understood that situation. You have to help people when they get out. Someone had helped me when I got out, so in turn I wanted to help someone as well.”
The pair lived together on and off for three years. She described Leathers as funny and witty.
“It was the wrong type of lifestyle,” she said of the lesbian relationship. “It didn’t make either of us less human than if we were in a heterosexual relationship, a bisexual relationship. We are still human. We have emotions. We laugh. We cry. It was part of our life.”
At her trial, Oklahoma County prosecutors painted Allen as a person who hunted down her victims. Prosecutors introduced a card Allen had given Leathers.
The card had a gorilla on it. The printed message said, “Patience my ass. I am going to kill something.” Inside, Allen had written, “Try and leave me and you will understand this card more. Dig. For real, no joke.
Leathers was portrayed as meek and timid.
Wanda Jean Allen said her attorney was not given a fair shot at defending her and was limited in what he could present. In 1979, Leathers was arrested in Tulsa for the stabbing death of Sheila Marie Barker, whom she killed outside a Tulsa disco. A judge later determined the slaying was self-defense.
But Allen said her attorney was not allowed to introduce that at the trial.
Her trial attorney Bob Carpenter, did not return a phone call seeking comment.
In her first interview in 12 years, Wanda Jean Allen talked about her childhood, family, who she is and who she is not.
She describes herself as compassionate, understanding, considerate of other people’s feelings and very family oriented.
I am not a monster,” Allen said. “I am a human. I laugh and I cry, just as you do and others. I am not a vengeful-type person. I don’t try to hurt people.”
Allen was the oldest girl among eight siblings.
“We had love,” Allen said. “We didn’t have a lot of financial support or materialistic things. But we had love in the house.”
In her teens, she got into trouble for what she calls behavior problems and spent some time in a juvenile facility. She later spent some time in foster care
At the age of 15, her IQ tested at 69, which was within the upper limit of mental retardation. Later, she was tested at an IQ of 80.
“I think my motor skills are different from other people that can comprehend things faster. I am not as fast at getting things as some people. I am slow in that area. But over the years, you know, you deal with your handicap. To be in society, you have to deal with that. It can be a limitation on what you can do.”
Wanda Jean Allen graduated from U.S. Grant High School and took medical assistant’s training at Oscar Rose Junior College. She worked at a veterans’ hospital and at the Oklahoma City Golf and Country Club, among other jobs.
She is one of three women on death row. On Sept. 14, all three got baptized.
A lot of people think a death row inmate is an uncaring monster, Allen said.
“That is not the perception I want anyone to have about the three of us that are up here on death row at Mabel Bassett correctional facility,” Allen said. “We are humans. We care for other people. We feel what they are going through. Even if we are in a worse position than they are, we still focus on them.”
Wanda Jean Allen is locked down 23 hours a day, seven days a week.
She has no personal property in her cell, other than a television and radio. She is a fan of the Chicago Bulls, likes opera and reads John Grisham and Danielle Steele novels.
She repeatedly talks about her family. Her mother, Mary Allen, lives a few miles from the prison that has housed her daughter for 12 years.
“Your family is always going to be there regardless what you are going through,” she said. “The good times. The bad times. They are going to be there. My family has been doing this time with me. A lot of people don’t realize that. What you go through, you take your family through it as well.”
Wanda Jean Allen says she has a need to help people. If she could talk to children, she would tell them to stay close to their family and be independent.
“A life of crime ain’t where it is at,” she said. “You don’t have to prove nothing to no one. And if you are put in that positions where you have to provide something to someone, you don’t need to be around that person.”
In December, Allen will make an appearance before the five-member Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board.
“I am not nervous,” she said. “I am going to tell them what is my heart. Be direct with them. Tell them how I feel. Ask them to spare my life.”
Wanda Jean Allen has not been told much about the execution process, which is carried out shortly after 9 p.m. by lethal injection at Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester.
“If it came to it, I will just have to deal with those circumstances. My faith is strong. I know who has the last say so. I am talking about God.”
Christina Riggs was executed by the State of Arkansas for the murders of her two young children. Christina Riggs would be executed by lethal injection on May 2, 2000. Many believe that Christina wanted to be executed and from the time of the murders to her actual execution was less than three years.
Christina Riggs was born in Oklahoma on September 2, 1971 and she would work on a practical nurse.
On November 4, 1997 Christina Riggs planned the murders of her children. She gave them Amitriptyline in order to sedate her five year old son and two year old daughter. Christina then injected potassium chloride into her sons veins however she forgot to dilute the drug and it caused her son pain. Christina Riggs would smother her son and then would smother her two year old daughter.
Christina Riggs attempted to kill herself by taking 28 amitriptyline pills and injecting herself with potassium chloride. Christina’s mother would find her passed out on the floor and the two dead children in the bed. According to her defense team Riggs who dealt with major depressive disorder did not want her children split up after her suicide so decided to kill them
Christina Riggs would plead not guilty by reason of insanity however the defense would not work. Riggs would not allow her lawyers to put up a defense when it came to capital punishment. Christina would be sentenced to death.
Christina Riggs refused to file any appeals so her case blazed through and she was executed by lethal injection (using the same chemical she gave her son) on May 2, 2002
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A former nurse became the first woman to be executed in Arkansas for more than 150 years on Tuesday night, put to death by lethal injection for killing her two children in 1997.
Christina Marie Riggs’ last words were directed to the five-year-old son and two-year-old daughter she murdered. “I love you, my babies,” she said as a lethal mix of chemicals was injected into her wrist at a prison in Varner.
Riggs’ mother and lawyer initially argued that she had been suffering from post-traumatic stress from her work as a nurse treating victims of the terrorist bombing of a government building in Oklahoma City.
But Riggs, 28, waived her right to appeal and prevented her lawyer from applying for clemency, saying that she could not live with the guilt of the murders and wanted to be reunited with her children in heaven
“There is no way words can express how sorry I am for taking the lives of my babies,” she said before the execution. “Now I can be with my babies, as I always intended.”
Human rights activists said her desire to die confirmed her mental instability, and asked for the execution to be stopped on the grounds that it would amount to state-assisted suicide. But the Arkansas governor, Mike Huckabee, turned down their appeal.
Yesterday Riggs’ lawyer, John Wesley Hall, said: “It started out as a suicide and ended as a suicide.”
Riggs told the police that in November 1997 she gave her son, Justin, and daughter, Shelby, some anti-depressants in a cup of water to sedate them.
She then injected a large dose of potassium chloride into her son’s neck with the aim of putting him to sleep. When he woke up and started crying, she injected him with morphine and smothered him with a pillow. She also smothered her daughter.
She laid the two dead children on her bed, before injecting herself with potassium chloride and swallowing 28 anti-depressants.
She left a suicide note for Shelby’s father saying: “I can’t live like this any more, and I couldn’t bear to leave my children behind to be a burden on you or to be separated and raised apart from their fathers and live knowing their mother killed herself.”
The prosecution portrayed her as a cold-blooded killer to whom her children were an “inconvenience”.
She was accused of leaving them locked in their room for hours while she went out at night to karaoke bars.
Doctors testifying for her said she had been severely depressed as a result of sexual abuse as a child, a series of failed relationships with men, lack of money, and lack of self-esteem because of her obesity.
She went to her death weighing 122kg (270lb). She agreed to the execution needles being put in her wrists when her executioners were unable to find a vein in her arm.
Denying that her misfortunes excused her acts, the county prosecutor, Larry Jegley, said: “She claims she was horribly depressed, she was overweight and she was a single mom, and she didn’t have enough money.
“My response to that is ‘welcome to America’. Plenty of folks are in far worse situations than she was.”
Women put to death in America
A total of 560 women have been executed in the US, 3% of the convicts put to death. Five have been executed since 1976, when the death penalty was reinstated after a brief moratorium:
Velma BarfieldBy lethal injection in North Carolina on November 2 1984 for killing four people, including her mother and fiance, with ant poison. The sunday school teacher confessed and went to her death in pink pajamas after a meal of Cheez Doodles, a popular snack
Karla Faye Tucker By lethal injection in Texas on February 3 1998 for hacking two people to death with a pickaxe. She claimed to have undergone a religious conversion in prison and appealed unsuccessfully to the state governor, George W Bush, for clemency
Judy Buenoano By electric chair in Florida on March 30 1998 for poisoning her husband with arsenic. She was also convicted of drowning her son, who used a wheelchair
Betty Lou Beets By lethal injection in Texas on February 24 2000 for shooting her fifth husband and burying his body in her garden. The 62-year-old grandmother had been charged with, but not convicted of, shooting dead her fourth husband, whose body was also found in the garden, and was convicted of shooting and wounding her second husband. She claimed that she had been the victim of physical abuse by her successive spouses, but her appeal for clemency was turned down by Mr Bush
Christina Marie Riggs By lethal injection in Arkansas on May 2 2000 for the murder of her two children. She waived her right to appeal and forbade her lawyer to apply for clemency
28-year-old former nurse who had asked for the death penalty after murdering her two small children died by lethal injection Tuesday night, the first woman to be executed in Arkansas since 1845.
Christina Marie Riggs was put to death by lethal injection for killing her son, Justin, 5, and daughter, Shelby Alexis, 2, in November 1997.
Christina Riggs admitted killing the children, and explained that she was deeply depressed at the time. She said she gave her son potassium chloride and morphine and when that didn’t kill him, she smothered him with a pillow. Then she smothered her daughter. She also tried to kill herself with potassium chloride.
Potassium chloride was one of the three drugs the state used in executing Riggs.
The lethal injection was administered 9:18 p.m. Riggs was pronounced dead at 9:28 p.m.
Before the injection was administered, she made a statement that began,”No words can express just how sorry I am for taking the lives of my babies. No way I can make up for or take away the pain I have caused everyone who knew and loved them.”
After the injection was administered, her last words were, “I love you, my babies.”
At her 1998 trial, Christina Riggs asked jurors to sentence her to death, saying: “I want to be with my babies. I want you to give me the death penalty.”
Prosecutors said Riggs’ children had become an inconvenience. They said, for example, that she left them alone while she went to karaoke contests.
She gave both an antidepressant to make them drowsy, then injected Justin with the potassium chloride. But when Justin began crying, Riggs injected him with morphine left over from a hospital patient.
Then she smothered both children.
Riggs then took 28 antidepressant tablets in a suicide attempt.
The children were found dead in Riggs’ bed. Riggs was found on the floor.
Initially, Christina Riggs pursued appeal of her death sentence.
“We had to beg her to file an appeal of the conviction,” said her lawyer, John Wesley Hall Jr. of Little Rock.
But she soon withdrew it. “She just wanted to get it over with,” Hall said.
On Tuesday, Christina Riggs had the right to stop her execution at any time by resuming the appeals process again, but she chose not to do so.
Riggs was the only woman on Death Row in Arkansas and only the fifth woman to be executed in the United States since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.
She was the 22nd Death Row inmate to be executed in Arkansas since 1990, when the state carried out its first execution after the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment.
The last woman executed in Arkansas was Lavinia Burnett, hanged in 1845 as an accessory to murder.
Christina Riggs was executed for the murders of her two children
When Was Christina Riggs Executed
Christina Riggs was executed on May 2, 2000
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