Execution of Women Is Rare, Despite Sentencing

With the jury’s verdict of capital punishment, Sandi Nieves is due to join a rare sorority of approximately 55 women nationwide facing execution.

Like the rest of her macabre sisterhood of convicted killers, Nieves’ chances of being put to death remain slim. Working in her favor are her gender and the reality that most death sentences are overturned on appeal.

“The system has just been very reluctant to order the death of a woman,” said Victor L. Streib, dean of the law school at Ohio Northern University who has researched the topic for more than 20 years. “It’s part of our culture.”

Though the execution of Karla Faye Tucker in Texas in 1998 made headlines, the fact that so many people tried to save the life of the pickax-wielding murderess speaks volumes about how society still feels about executing women, even those who commit horrific crimes.

Although women commit about 13% of all homicides, they account for 1.9% of all defendants sentenced to death and only 1.5% of the total death-row population of about 3,600 across the country, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, whose information was last updated July 1.

Of the 38 states that permit the death penalty, only 18 currently have women on death row. The state with the most women on death row is California, which would have 12 once Nieves is sentenced by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge L. Jeffrey Wiatt, who is expected to uphold the jury’s decision.

But 12 still pales against the number of men on death row in the state--about 550.

Nationwide, women constitute about 0.5% of those actually executed. California, for its part, has not executed a woman since 1962, when Ventura County resident Elizabeth Ann “Ma” Duncan, who was convicted of plotting the murder of her daughter-in-law, died in a gas chamber.

“There’s a squeamishness, a great reluctance to sentence women, much less execute them,” Streib said.

Of the 42 clemencies granted nationwide since 1976, seven of them were for women, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

But because of the small numbers, more research is needed before sweeping conclusions can be drawn about whether governors take more pity on women, said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based center. Four of the seven women granted clemency had all been battered women in Ohio, Dieter said, after a change in laws there provided for such a defense.

Experts are divided over why Nieves received a death penalty verdict and whether it had anything to do with her horrendous crimes--murdering her four daughters.

“This was a horrific crime, and this was what the jury was reacting to,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, professor of law at USC.

But others say that death sentences, in general, have little to do with the viciousness of the underlying crimes.

“It’s very connected to the politics of communities,” said Lance Lindsey, executive director of the San Francisco-based Death Penalty Focus. “It’s up to prosecutors to decide whether to pursue the death penalty.”

Perhaps as a backlash to the state Supreme Court days of former Chief Justice Rose Bird, who voted to overturn all capital cases that came before her and who was later ousted by angry voters, political candidates across the state have seized upon law-and-order in their campaign platforms, experts said.

In Nieves’ case, Deputy Public Defender Howard Waco has accused prosecutors of seeking the death penalty so that Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti could appear tough on crime during an election year. Deputy Dist. Attys. Kenneth Barshop and Beth Silverman denied the claim, saying that the Santa Clarita woman’s crimes warranted capital punishment.

Regardless of the Nieves case, the number of California men and women condemned to death has dramatically grown over the last decade, corresponding with the increasingly pro-capital punishment stance among politicians.

Contrasting with the current numbers, in 1990 there were fewer than 300 men and only two women on death row in California.

Sometimes prosecutors appear to seek more death penalties when there have been successful capital cases in a neighboring county, said Streib, the law school dean.

In California, two of the last three women sentenced to death in the last couple of years were from San Diego County. The case of the most recent one, Susan Eubanks of San Marcos, bore eerie similarities to the Nieves case.

Eubanks was unemployed, deeply in debt and angry at her two ex-husbands and a former boyfriend for their failed relationships. In a drunken rage, she shot her four sons, ages 4 to 14, and attempted suicide. Eubanks was convicted of the 1997 crime last August and sentenced to death last October.

Odds are that neither Eubanks nor Nieves will face an executioner.

According to a recent study, state and federal courts across the nation have overturned death sentences in more than two-thirds of all capital cases. And in the vast majority of cases retried, the defendants escaped death. On average, only one of every 20 death row prisoners was executed.

Since the Duncan case in 1962, only five women have been executed in the country, and four of those have been recent--Tucker in 1998, Judy Buenoano of Florida in 1998, Betty Lou Beets of Texas in February and Christina Riggs of Arkansas in May. But experts believe the sudden jump is due to coincidence and the slow process of appellate litigation since the death penalty was reinstated in many states in 1976, rather than a significant, long-term trend.

“These cases had to work their way through appeals,” Dieter said.

It could also be a statistical blip. In North Carolina, for example, no woman was sentenced to death for a decade, Streib said. Then suddenly there were three women sentenced to die in one year. No woman was sentenced to death over the next 10 years.