Posted on 09/23/2010 10:55:51 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Her death breaks with traditional queasiness over such punishment for female criminals. Legal scholars say fewer women are given capital sentences because they are less likely to kill.
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.
The lethal-injection death of Teresa Lewis, convicted of the 2002 contract killing of her husband and stepson, broke with a tradition of societal "queasiness" about executing women, one legal expert said. It could also psychologically clear the way to carrying out death sentences on others among the 60 condemned women in the nation — including 18 in California, according to some capital punishment observers.
Lewis' death sentence was only the 12th carried out against a woman prisoner in the 34 years since capital punishment was restored as a sentencing option. In that same period, 1,214 men have been put to death.
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Most Americans have no queasiness executing these degenerate killers. Only you leftist pinkos bend over backwards to defend the indefensible. Can we make Mummia next?
Interesting... because fewer whites (percentage wise to population) are executed than blacks. "Legal scholars" usually attribute this to racism.
If you murder in cold blood & are found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt then I am all for the death plenty. Male or female. I don’t want to pay taxes to keep you alive. I don’t care what race you are either.
Actually it's a sign of the two-faced nature of today's women's rights movement. When women claim they want to be equals with men, they're certainly not above playing the typical female cards when it comes to escaping punishment.
Remember Susan Smith, the woman who drowned her two young boys in South Carolina? Or Andrea Yates? Or other women who clearly committed multiple murders but didn't get the needle or the chair?
It's because they get a psychiatrist to tell us they were insane. Why what woman would WANT to do that? And then they can get the woman on the stand to bawl her eyes out and tell everyone she's soooooo sorrrr-ryyyyy. And the defense will claim she's suffered enough already, blah blah blah.
The men are presumed to be heartless monsters and any remorse is clearly a courtroom act to try to escape the harshest sentence. Why, killing is too good for him, blah blah blah.
No doubt men will always dominate death row and capital cases because it is within men's nature to be violent more than it is for women. Women take out their anger with their mouths. Men use guns or knives or baseball bats - whatever's handy. Plus, there are women who will manipulate men into doing their killing for them.
But, ultimately, women almost always can get their lives spared by crying and saying their sorry knowing somebody on the jury is going to buy it.
But, hey, it's another "first" for women so the feminists should all feel proud. < /sarc >
One aspect of this execution that they do not explore is the antiseptic quality of lethal-injection.
The calm clinical quality of lethal-injection is far removed from the gut wrenching reality of a hanging.
Maybe the more “humane” our executions become the more common that they will become.
Perhaps we will become comfortable with executing women because it will no longer seem as brutal as it did in the past. Maybe because this form of execution is as peaceful as watching a person fall asleep watching TV it will not seem so terrible a thing.
The Left may have chosen a failing strategy in trying to stop the death penalty by using the “cruel and unusual punishment” strategy. In making executions more and more “humane” they may have so removed the image of the death penalty as violent that people no longer see the death penalty as unpleasant in anyway other than its ending a life.
If you can’t do the penatly, then don’t do the crime.
I agree with Susan Smith getting the chair, but I put Andrea Yates in a different category; she was obviously mental (under a shrink’s care at the time), made no attempt to flee or conceal what she had done (unlike Susan Smith), and probably couldn’t care less what they did to her. Her own husband, who lost all his children, defended her; he said she’d had problems for a very long time, and it was easy to ruch to snap judgments without knowing the background.
Fear of the death penalty to some small degree prevents crime. Everyone benefits from death penalty as hopeless threats are removed from society. End of story.
“If you murder in cold blood & are found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt then I am all for the death plenty.”
What’s interesting is that the woman in this case simply contracted for the killing. Those who carried it out only got life imprisonment. I’m not arguing she did not deserve to die, but find it curious that Virginia thought it appropriate to exempt the actual killers from the same punishment.
They should also get over the societal “queasiness” about executing minors as well. A lot of bad seeds running around. English Common law, over 7 years, you know the difference between right and wrong.
I think it came down to an issue of the great betrayal. Whether she meant it or not, at one point she took the oath of being with her man 'for richer or poorer.. through sickness and in health.. till death do us apart'. In the end the very person who had promised to be by your side till death did you apart, did you apart by bringing about your death.
“I put Andrea Yates in a different category”.
Andrea Yates was mentally ill (had a verified history of it). She killed because she was “told by God”. The woman they just executed did so because she wanted life insurance money. Very different circumstances. Just a thought.
I agree her behavior was egregious. Nevertheless, but for her finding killers willing to carry out this enormous act of betrayal, her husband presumably would still be alive.
I can understand how an accomplice to a killing might get a lesser sentence than the actual killer. I’m just surprised that the person who actually took another person’s life was treated more leniently than the one who paid him etc.
I agree.. the actual killers should have gotten the DP as well.
I couldn’t agree more.
She killed two people for money and Virginia made her pay the ultimate price for it. What is there to be queasy about?
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