Virginia's execution of a woman may signal shift in national thinking

Submitted by anthony on Fri, 2010-09-24 05:08

Article here. Excerpt:

'Virginia put to death a 41-year-old woman Thursday night, the first execution of a female in the country in five years and the first in that state for nearly a century.
...
Legal scholars attribute the "gender bias" in executions to women's lower propensity to kill and the tendency of those who do to kill a husband, lover or child in the heat of emotion, seldom with the "aggravating factors" states require for a death sentence. Lewis pleaded guilty to having arranged the killings to collect $250,000 in insurance money on her stepson.

"The way capital punishment statutes are written inadvertently favor women. They make it a worse crime if a homicide is committed during a felony, like robbery or rape, which are rarely involved in women's homicides," said Victor Streib, a Northern Ohio University law professor who has spent 30 years researching condemned women. "It's also easier to convince a jury that women suffer emotional distress or other emotional problems more than men."'

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She had a bad lawyer. A good lawyer would have pointed out the stepson was abusive and thus deserved to die. The nice thing about this defense is that it doesn't need to be true and the victim can't dispute it.

Victor Streib says the law makes the punishment worse for homicides committed during a robbery. But wasn't this a robbery--kill the stepson to get the insurance money?

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Submitted by el cid on Sat, 2010-09-25 21:34