Tag: women on death row

Teresa Lewis Execution

Teresa Lewis

Teresa Lewis was executed by the State of Virginia for the murder of her husband and stepson. Teresa Lewis would be executed by lethal injection on September 23, 2010. Lewis was the first and so far only woman to be executed in the State since 1912

Teresa Lewis was born on April 26, 1969 in Danville Virginia. Lewis would get married at sixteen years old and had a daughter however the marriage would soon crumble. Lewis began an addiction to painkillers and alcohol

Teresa Lewis would begin working at a textile mile where she would soon marry the manager, Julian Clifton Lewis Jr. Julian older son would die in a car accident and he would inherit two hundred thousand dollars.

In 2002 Julian youngest son Charles Jr Lewis obtained a $250,000 life insurance policy as he was deploying to Iraq naming his father as the beneficiary and Teresa as the secondary beneficiary.

The next month Teresa began an affair with two much younger men, Matthew Jessee Shallenberger and Rodney Lamont Fuller. Soon the plan came forward to get rid of her husband and stepson to collect the insurance money.

The first time Shallenberger and Fuller attempted to kill Teresa’s husband failed so the pair would try again a week later. The two men shoot both of the men as they lay sleeping in their beds. Teresa Lewis would wait 45 minutes before calling the police. When police arrived Julian would tell them that his wife knew who shot him before passing away. Teresa Lewis attempted to stick to the story the two murders were the result of a home invasion.

Teresa Lewis attempted to withdraw $50,000 from her husbands account and police would also learn that she was gathering the assets of her husband and stepson before the funeral even took place. Teresa Lewis would be arrested and charged with two counts of capital murder.

The judge in the case would rule that Teresa Lewis was the mastermind of the double murders and sentenced her to death. Teresa Lewis would be executed by lethal injection on September 23, 2010

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A 41-year-old woman who conspired to murder her husband and stepson has been executed in the US state of Virginia.

Teresa Lewis was the first woman to be put to death in the US for five years and in Virginia since 1912.

Lewis, who had learning difficulties, used sex and cash to persuade hitmen to kill her family in 2002.

The US Supreme Court and Virginia’s governor refused to stop her execution, which took place at 2100 (0100 GMT) at Greensville Correctional Center

Lewis spent her last hours with her spiritual adviser and family members at the prison in the city of Jarratt.

She requested a final meal of two breasts of fried chicken, sweet peas with butter, a slice of either German cake or apple pie, and a Dr Pepper soft drink, prison spokesman Larry Traylor said.

As she was escorted into the death chamber, Lewis appeared tearful, her jaw clenched, Associated Press reported.

Shortly before her execution, Lewis asked if her stepdaughter Kathy Clifton, daughter of her murdered husband Julian Lewis, was there.

Ms Clifton was in a witness room separated from the execution chamber by a two-way mirror.

“I want Kathy to know that I love her and I’m very sorry,” Lewis said.

Those were her final words. The time of her death was given as 2113 (0113 GMT).

On 30 October 2002, Lewis left the door to her family home in the Virginia city of Danville unlocked for gunmen Matthew Shallenberger and Rodney Fuller.

Lewis’s husband Julian, 51, and stepson, Charles Lewis, 25, were later found dead from shotgun blasts.

Lawyers for Lewis filed a petition for clemency on 25 August 2010, but the US Supreme Court refused to intervene. Two of three women in the nine-judge court voted to halt the execution.

Lewis, who has an IQ of 72, claimed that she did not possess the intelligence to have planned the killings, and that new defence evidence allegedly proved one of the gunmen manipulated her.

Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell said medical and psychological reports provided no compelling reason to grant clemency to Lewis, noting she had admitted her role in the killings.

“After numerous evaluations, no medical professional has concluded that Teresa Lewis meets the medical or statutory definition of mentally retarded,” Mr McDonnell said after he rejected the clemency plea.

Lewis was motivated to hire the gunmen by the desire to inherit her husband’s assets and her stepson’s life insurance. She paid for the weapons and ammunition used in the murders.

Shallenberger and Fuller were both sentenced to life in prison. Shallenberger committed suicide in 2006.

Virginia carries out the second highest number of executions of any state in the US.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-11401164

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 Teresa Lewis spent her last days praying and singing hymns, but she appeared frightened and tense as she entered Virginia’s death chamber.

Lewis, 41, died by injection at 9:13 p.m. Thursday at the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt, Va., according to The Associated Press.

Lewis’ final words were a message for the daughter of the husband she had killed.

“I just want Kathy to know that I love her, and I’m very sorry,” she said.

Her death brought an end to the debate over whether Lewis deserved to die, with supporters saying she was borderline mentally retarded, despite the prosecution’s claim that she was the mastermind of her husband’s and stepson’s murders.

Her attorney, James Rocap III, said Lewis was peaceful before going to her death and had been praying and singing in the days leading up to her execution.

“We thought that we were supposed to be helping her, while she was actually helping us,” Rocap said.

But when Teresa Lewis entered the death chamber to be strapped onto a guerney and injected with the lethal cocktail of drugs, her jaw was visibly clenched. She looked around tensely and appeared frightened, witnesses reported.

In the chamber with her were 14 corrections officers who assisted her onto the guerney and secured her to it with heavy leather straps.

Moments before her execution, Teresa Lewis asked if her husband’s daughter — her stepdaughter — was near. She was. Kathy Clifton was in an adjacent witness room blocked from the inmate’s view by a two-way mirror. Lewis then gave her final words of farewell to her.

As the drugs flowed into her body, her feet bobbed but she otherwise remained motionless. A guard tapped her lightly on the shoulder, reassuringly, as she slipped into death.

Teresa Lewis was sentenced to die for concocting a grisly plan to hire two hit men to kill her husband and stepson in October 2002. Lewis stood by while Julian Lewis and son Charles Lewis were shot at close range as they slept.

She had promised the killers a cut of a life insurance policy to carry out the murders. Both triggermen were sentenced to life in prison, and one committed suicide in 2006.

Despite the controversy surrounding her execution, the Supreme Court refused to hear her appeal earlier this week, and Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell had denied her petitions for clemency.

On the website Save Teresa Lewis, run by supporters who tried to have her death sentence commuted, a message was posted in which Lewis thanked them for their work on her behalf. They also posted a farewell Lewis had recently written to fellow inmates.

“Man wants me to die, but I’m not worrying over this, I’m trusting Jesus,” she wrote. She urged the prisoners to turn to Jesus promising, “He will forgive you of all your sins and He will bring you into His loving arms.”

Teresa Lewis, case number 09-4, became the 12th woman to be put to death in the United States since 1976, and left behind 60 women remaining on death row nationally, who constitute less than 2 percent of the total death row population. She joined a group of about 40 women who have been executed in the United States in the past 100 years, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a group that opposes the death penalty and tracks its impact.

Those opposed to Lewis’ death sentence said the fact that she was a woman should not allow her to be treated differently. What they found troublesome was that Teresa Lewis, with an IQ of 72, was borderline mentally retarded and received a more severe sentence than those who pulled the trigger.

“It would be grossly unfair if the one person among those involved who is probably the least danger to society, who is certainly no more guilty than those who carried out the murders and whose disabilities call out for mercy, is the only person scheduled to die for this crime,” said Richard Dieter, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/teresa-lewis-looked-frightened-entered-death-chamber/story?id=11718082

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Why Was Teresa Lewis Executed

Teresa Lewis was executed for the murders of her husband and stepson

When Was Teresa Lewis Executed

Teresa Lewis was executed on September 23, 2010

Kimberly McCarthy Execution

Kimberly McCarthy execution

Kimberly McCarthy was executed by the State of Texas for the murder of her elderly neighbor. Kimberly McCarthy would be executed by lethal injection on June 26, 2013 she was the 500th prisoner to be executed by the State of Texas by this method.

Kimberly McCarthy was born on May 11, 1961 in Greenville Texas. She was married for a short time and had one son. Kimberly McCarthy would work as a occupational therapist for a time until a crack addiction took over her life. McCarthy would spend time in prison for an assortment of charges including prostitution and theft

On July 21, 1997 Kimberly McCarthy would phone her elderly neighbor to ask to borrow some sugar. When McCarthy arrived at the home she would stab the victim multiple times, beat her with a candle holder and cut off a finger to steal a diamond ring. McCarthy would steal the victims car and a variety of objects from the home. McCarthy would be arrested the next day and charged with capital murder.

Kimberly McCarthy lawyers would put up a defense that their client was being set up and was not guilty of the brutal murder. However the jury felt differently and convicted her and sentenced her to death.

Kimberly McCarthy would be executed by lethal injection on June 26, 2013

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Kimberly McCarthy on Wednesday evening became the 500th prisoner executed in Texas since 1976, when the death penalty was reinstated in the state, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

McCarthy was pronounced deadat 7:37 p.m. ET at the Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville, Texas, said department spokesman John Hurt.

The 52-year-old former occupational therapist was convicted in 1997 of murdering her 71-year-old neighbor, Dorothy Booth, a retired college professor.

Booth was found beaten and stabbed to death, and one of her fingers was severed, indicating a ring was forcibly removed, the Department of Criminal Justice said.

Evidence later showed McCarthy had pawned the stolen diamond ring the day of the crime. When she was arrested, McCarthy was found with Booth’s credit cards and a large knife stained with her neighbor’s blood, the department said.

In her last statement, McCarthy thanked her supporters, including her ex-husband, attorney and spiritual adviser.

“Thank you everybody. This is not a loss, this is a win. You know where I am going. I am going home to be with Jesus. Keep the faith. I love y’all,” McCarthy said, according to Jason Clark, another department spokesman.

Outside the prison, nicknamed the “Walls Unit,” a small crowd of demonstrators gathered Wednesday afternoon to protest the execution. They held signs that read, “Don’t kill for me” and “End executions in Texas.”

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Monday denied McCarthy’s appeal of her sentence and declined on Tuesday to reconsider it, saying her claims should have been raised previously, CNN affiliate KPRC reported.

Texas has led the nation in the number of executions since 1976, but the number of states carrying out capital punishment continues to drop.

Last year, Texas executed more people than it sentenced to death for the eighth straight year.

Four states – Texas, Oklahoma, Mississippi and Arizona – accounted for three quarters of all U.S. executions in 2012.

https://www.cnn.com/2013/06/26/justice/texas-500th-execution/index.html

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The most-prolific death penalty state in the US executed its 500th inmate on Wednesday as protesters gathered outside the penitentiary walls to rally against a grim landmark in America’s capital punishment history.

About 70 people waited outside the prison in central Huntsville, Texas, where Kimberly McCarthy was put to death by lethal injection. After the scheduled execution time of 6pm local time (1am Thursday BST), some chanted “murderers!” as a dozen guards stood behind yellow tape and blocked the road leading to the execution chamber.

Kimberly McCarthy, 52, was declared dead at 6.37pm. In her final statement, she said: “This is not a loss. This is a win. You know where I’m going. I’m going home to Jesus. I love you all … God is great,” Associated Press reported.

Prison officials administered a single dose of pentobarbital, a barbiturate.

Typically about 10 people gather in Huntsville to protest against each execution. Peter Johnson, 68, stood holding a sign bearing the slogan “Execute justice not people”. He said he had travelled from Dallas, three hours away, and this was the fourth or fifth time he had come to express his disgust in front of the red-brick walls of the Huntsville unit.

“Not only is it a tragedy for this particular person, it’s a disgrace for our nation and our state,” he said. “I feel the way the death penalty is dispensed in the state of Texas is tied to the colour of the killer and the colour of the victim.”

Critics of the death penalty have long argued that it disproportionately affects poor people and ethnic minorities. Black people make up 12% of the state’s population, but nearly 40% of the 281 inmates on death row.

McCarthy’s lawyer, Maurie Levin, had filed a last-ditch appeal alleging that her client’s state-appointed legal representation at trial was inadequate and that the composition of the Dallas County jury was unfair because the prosecution used peremptory strikes to remove prospective non-white jurors, with the result that all but one of the 13-person jury was white.

But on Tuesday the Texas court of criminal appeals refused to hear the appeal for the second time in two days. McCarthy’s execution had already been stayed twice this year, once only hours before she was due to die. 

Since it resumed capital punishment in 1982, Texas has executed more prisoners than the next six states combined. Virginia, the second-most prolific state, has put to death 110 people. With its 26 million people Texas is the second-largest state in the US by population.

Some outside the prison held posters declaring “Wanted – Serial Killer, Gov. Rick Perry.” Like his predecessor, George W. Bush, the Texas governor is a firm believer in capital punishment. In 2011 he said he lost no sleep over the possibility that his state had executed an innocent person.

His spokesman told the Guardian last year that Perry had introduced reforms allowing for greater use of DNA testing, imposing minimum qualifications for court-appointed defence lawyers and making it easier for prosecutors to seek life without parole for offenders. Perry has presided over 261 executions, more than any other governor in modern US history, but the rate of executions has declined from a high of 40 in 2000, Bush’s last year.

In 2012, Texas executed 15 prisoners. Kimberly McCarthy is the eighth inmate given a lethal injection in Texas this year. Another seven executions are scheduled between now and January, including two next month.

Kimberly McCarthy was a former care-home therapist and a cocaine addict. According to court records, she entered the home of her white neighbour, Dorothy Booth, on the pretext of wanting to borrow some sugar. McCarthy then stabbed the retired 71-year-old five times, beat her, cut off a finger to steal her diamond ring and fled with her purse. She was found guilty and sentenced to death in 2002, five years after the murder in a Dallas suburb.

Kimberly McCarthy is the first woman executed in the US since 2010 and only the 13th since capital punishment was reinstated in the US in 1976. The US has executed 1,338 people since then, the Death Penalty Information Center says.

Polls suggest most Americans still support capital punishment. McCarthy’s was the second US execution this week. Brian Davis was put to death for the rape and murder of his girlfriend’s mother in Oklahoma on Tuesday after Governor Mary Fallin rejected a recommendation from the state’s parole board that the sentence be reduced to life without parole, reports said.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/27/texas-executes-500th-inmate-mccarthy

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Why Was Kimberly McCarthy Executed

Kimberly McCarthy was executed for the murder of an elderly woman

When Was Kimberly McCarthy Executed

Kimberly McCarthy was executed on June 26, 2013

Suzanne Basso Execution

Suzanne Basso

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.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/06/texas-killer-basso-woman-executed-us-death-penalty

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Suzanne Basso was executed for the murder of mentally challenged man

When Was Suzanne Basso Executed

Suzanne Basso was executed February 5, 2014

Lisa Coleman Execution

lisa coleman execution 1

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

Wanda Jean Allen Execution

Wanda Jean Allen
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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.”

https://tulsaworld.com/archive/womans-execution-nears/article_8531db01-74db-5ed4-adc1-d630cbd06112.html

Frequently Asked Questions

Wanda Jean Allen FAQ

Why Was Wanda Jean Allen Executed

Wanda Jean Allen was executed for the murder of her girlfriend

When Was Wanda Jean Allen Executed

Wanda Jean Allen was executed on January 11, 2001