Thought this was an interesting article on women and the DP:
"...Women guilty of capital murder were far less likely than men to be sentenced to death,
and defendants who killed women were far more likely to be sentenced to death than
defendants who killed men. We argue that all of these findings are consistent
with chivalric norms, and we conclude that, in prosecutors decisions to seek
death and juries decisions to impose it, chivalry appears to be alive and well...
...
2. Gender and the Death Penalty
The chivalry hypothesis suggests that female defendants would be favored
by the criminal justice system and that they would be convicted of lesser crimes
or receive lesser sentences than similarly situated men. Recent studies have shown that at all stages of the criminal judicial process female defendants are
treated more leniently than males145 and that in homicide cases male offenders
generally receive longer sentences than female offenders.146 An earlier study
concluded: A review of the post-1975 literature suggests that the chivalry
hypothesis is now wholly accepted.147
Studies of gender and the death penalty have, for the most part, focused on
the gender of the defendant and have consistently found that
women are
sentenced to death and executed at significantly lower rates than men.148 A study
of the death penalty applied to women from 1973-2005 found that at every stage
of the process female defendants appear to be diverted away from the death
penalty at a greater rate than men While 10% of people arrested for murder are
women, only 2% of death sentences imposed at trial are imposed upon
women,149 and women account for only 1.1% of persons actually executed.150
Men arrested for murder are six times more likely to be sentenced to death than
are women arrested for murder.151 Many scholars have posited that the reason for
this discrepancy is chivalric beliefs.1522 The theory, affirmed by studies of
attitudes toward female offenders,153 argues that women are stereotyped as
weak and passive, creating and continuing mens protective attitude toward
women.154That any women at all are executed is explained by the fact that
those women did not fit the stereotypical feminine role feminine role because they were
women of color or lesbians or had in some way rejected the prescribed wife-and-mother
role.155
Dissenting from the conclusion that chivalry explains the scarcity of women sentenced to death,
Elizabeth Rapaport is one of the few researchers to
argue in favor of other explanatory factors.156 While acknowledging that [t]here
are deep cultural inhibitions against the deliberate killing of women157 and that
male murderers are substantially more likely to receive a death sentence than
female murderers,158 she has argued that [t]he fundamental reason why so few
women murderers are death sentenced is that women rarely commit the kinds of
murders that are subject to capital punishment, particularly felony-murders.159
Rather, she argues that when women murder, they overwhelmingly murder
family members, and domestic murder is rarely treated as seriously by the
criminal justice system as stranger murder.160 As discussed in Part IV, the
empirical data from California calls into question these broad assertions.161..."
http://genderlawjustice.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Chivalry-is-Not-Dead.pdf
And this one:
EXECUTIONS OF FEMALE OFFENDERS
"...(1) Actual execution of female offenders is quite rare, with only 569 documented instances in
the 378 years from 1632 through late-2010....
Of the 167 death sentences imposed since 1973, only fifty-five women remained under
sentences of death in eighteen states and under federal jurisdiction as of late 2010....
(2) These fifty-five women comprise only 1.7% of the approximately 3,261 persons currently
on death row.
(3) One-quarter (14/55) of these fifty-five death-sentenced women killed their husbands or
boyfriends; and another one-fifth (11/55) killed their children. One other woman killed
both her husband and her children, and three other women killed a young niece, nephew,
or child in their care.
(4) The present ages of these fifty-five female offenders range from 27 to 77 years old, and
they have been on death row from less than one year to almost twenty-five years....
ARIZONA
(last execution of female by Arizona on 2-21-1930)
(2 female offenders now on Arizonas death row)
Andriano, Wendi: White; age 30 at crime and now age 40 (DOB: 8-6-1970); murder of Latin (?)
male age 33 (her husband) in Mesa on 10-8-2000; sentenced on 12-22-2004.
Milke, Debra Jean: White; age 25 at crime and now age 46 (DOB: 3-10-1964); murder of white
male age 4 (her son) in Maricopa County on 12-2-1989; sentenced on 1-18-1991.
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/documents/femaledeathrow.pdf
Glad to see you are here. Hope you will peek in during trial. And I hope the trial goes in a hurry cause that girl has some serious reality to face up to.
