Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Criminal Law Blogs -> Sentencing Law and Policy

Criminal Law

: Sentencing Law and Policy

Comdemned battered female murderer raising interesting issues in Tennessee

By Douglas A. Berman

This notable new local editorial, which is headlined "Bredesen holds complex case; Gaile Owens poses a challenge: Abuse and a co-defendant figure into the fate of a Bartlett woman who hired her husband's killer," spotlights a capital case and debate worth watching in Tennessee. Here are the details: Gaile Owens, facing trial for the murder of her husband, and co-defendant Sydney Porterfield were offered a deal by a Memphis prosecutor in January 1986: Plead guilty and you won't be executed. But they both had to agree to it or the bargain was off, and Porterfield refused. Consequently they both went to trial, and Owens may become the first woman to be executed in Tennessee since 1820. She could also be the first woman in America to be executed for a crime committed under the influence of battered woman's syndrome...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on April 23, 2010 (boomark / email).