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Reviewing some of the rare women who end up on death row

By Douglas A. Berman

This local story from Virginia, which is headlined "Two women's death row cases share similarities," highlights the kinds of murders that get a few female defendants condemned to die. Here is how the piece begins: Marilyn Kay Plantz, executed in 2001 by the state of Oklahoma, persuaded her younger lover and his pal to kill her husband for insurance money and stood by as they brutally did so.  Two years later, Teresa Lewis of Pittsylvania County wound up on Virginia's death row for a strikingly similar crime. More than 1,200 men have been executed in the U.S. since the death penalty resumed in 1977.  If she is put to death as scheduled Sept. 23, Lewis will be just the 12th woman and the first in Virginia in almost a century. It is a gender gap that largely, if not entirely, can be explained by the relatively few capital crimes committed by women...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on September 07, 2010 (boomark / email).