Women on Death Row Essay Example for Free

Women on Death Row Essay History of Death Row Capital punishment is punishment by death for a crime, also known as the death penalty (Encyclopedia, Britannica, online). A sentence of death may be carried out by one of five lawful means: electrocution, hanging, lethal injection, gas chamber, and firing squad. Capital punishment is viewed very differently by many people. Some think it violates our Eight Amendment of the United States Constitution, cruel and unusual punishment, while others think it is justice to those who have had their voices taken away. The first established death penalty laws date as far back as the 18th Century B.  C. in the Code of King Hammaurabi of Babylon, which codified the death penalty for twenty-five different crimes. The death penalty was also part of the 14th Century B. C. ’s Draconian Code of Athens, which made death the only punishment for all crimes; and in the 5th Century B. C. ’s Roman law of the Twelve Tablets. Death sentences were carried out by such as crucifixion, drowning, beating to death, burning alive, and impalement. In the 10th Century A. D. , hanging became the usual method for executions for any crime, except in times of the war. This trend would not last very long, in the 16th Century, under the reign of Henry VIII, as many as seventy-two thousand people were estimated to have been executed. Boiling, burning at the stake, hanging, beheading, and drawing and quartering were some of the common methods of executions. The number of capital crimes rose in Britain throughout the next two centuries, and by the 1700’s, two hundred twenty-two crimes were punishable by death in Britain; including stealing, cutting down trees, counterfeiting tax stamps, stealing from a house or shop, and robbing a rabbit warren. Because of the severity of the death penalty, many of the jurors would not convict the defendants if it was not a serious offense. This helped lead to the reform of Britain’s death penalty, and it helped influence America’s use of the death penalty also. The first attempted reform in the United States of the death penalty occurred when Thomas Jefferson introduced a bill to revise Virginia’s death penalty laws. It proposed that capital punishment be used only for the crimes of murder and treason, and the bill was defeated by only one vote. Although some states abolished the death penalty in the mid-19th Century, it was actually the first half of the 20th Century that marked the beginning of the â€Å"Progressive Period† of reform for the Unites States. Women’s First Executions There are very little details of many of the earlier hangings because of the lack of media in those times. Newspapers only began to be routine in the mid 1800’s and even then they were usually only published on a weekly basis. But as a result, the earliest recorded female hanging in the colonies was that of Jane Chapman in James City, Virginia, in 1632 (http:www. apitalpunishmentuk. org/amfemhang. html). Jane Champion’s crime was lost in history, and no one seems to know the offense she committed. The second woman known to be executed in the United States that was recorded was that of Margaret Hatch on June 24th 1633, for murder, also in Virginia. Hanging was the normal method of execution for both males and females until the electric chair was introduced in 1888 in New York (http://www. capitalpunishmentuk. org/chair. html). It was also stated that the female prisoners usually liked to look their best before their executions and if they could afford it, they would buy or make themselves a new outfit for the event. If they were too poor to make or buy an outfit, it was not out of the ordinary for their friends, the townsfolk, or even the sheriff to provide them with new clothes to wear for the execution. Women Currently on Death Row It is very rare for a woman to be given the sentence of death in the United States. There are approximately fifty thousand women in prison in the United States, and only 0. % of them are on death row. Very few women enter the capital murder system, and fewer still are ever actually executed, according to the (Death Penalty Info Center): †¢ Women account for only one in ten murder arrest. †¢ Women account for one in fifty death sentences imposed at a trial level. †¢ Women account for only one in seventy-one persons presently on death row. †¢ Women account for only one in ninety-two persons actually executed in the modern era since 1976. As of January 1st, 2011, there were 60 women on death row (â€Å"Death Penalty for Female Offenders†). This constitutes for 1. 5% of the death row population of around 3,251 people on death row in the United States. Both the death sentencing rate and the death row population remain very minute for females in comparison to that of males. The execution of female offenders is quite uncommon with only 571 documented cases as of December 31, 2011, and beginning with the first execution in 1632, that of Jane Champion. These executions constitute 2. 9% of the total confirmed executions in the United States since 1608. As of December 31, 2011, there were only twelve females that had been executed since 1976 in the United States. Women on Death Row in Tennessee Tennessee Prison for Women in Tennessee is located in Davidson County in Nashville, and was opened in 1966. It is a maximum security facility with an operating capacity for seven hundred eighty-nine female felons in the state of Tennessee, and it is also accredited by the American Correctional Association. The TPFW houses inmates on all levels, including pre-release participants, work release inmates, and those women who are sentenced to the death penalty. The TPFW also offers academic courses that help the inmates get their GED and also Adult Basic Education, along with Special Education programs. Vocational classes such as computer literacy and application, construction, greenhouse management, culinary arts, and cosmetology skills are also offered to the female inmates. This is offered to help the inmates when and if they are released back into society to help them better survive outside the walls of prison. Inmates also have full right of entry to a range of treatment and psychological programs that include substance abuse, sex offender treatment and aftercare, anger management, pre-release and career management success programs. The prison also offers a drug and alcohol treatment program called the Correctional Recovery Academy. They also have a training program called PPAWS, Prison Puppies Achieving Worthy Service, which is designed to help in the rehabilitating of the female inmates, while also teaching them a marketable job skill. TPFW has also received national acknowledgment for their weekend child visitation program. In the state of Tennessee, there have only been two women sentenced to death row since record taking began, Gaile K. Owens, and Christa G. Pike. Gaile Kirksey Owens, inmate# 109737, was born September 22nd, 1952, in Memphis, Tennessee (http:tn. ov/correction/media/womendeathrow. html). Later, Gaile married Ronald Owens, who was an associate director of nursing. Mr. Owens was 37 years old when Gaile Owens in a murder-for-hire scheme, paid $17,000 to Sidney Porterfield to murder her philandering husband on February 17, 1985. Owens was sentenced to death on January 14th, 1986, for accessory before fact-murder. Owens served twenty-six years on death row and after twenty-six years of appeals, her defense attorney asked the court to either commute her sentence or issue a recommendation to the governor to do so. Owens fate rested in the hands of Governor Phil Bredesen. Within two months of Owens execution, on July 14, 2010, Governor Bredesen commuted her death sentence to life and she could be eligible for parole in 2012. Governor Bredesen said he decided to commute her sentence to life in prison because she had a plea deal with the prosecutors but then was put on trial when her co-defendant refused to accept the bargain. This was the second time that Governor Bredesen commuted the death sentence to a convicted murderer. Christa Gail Pike inmate#261368, born March 10th, 1976, in West Virginia, became the youngest woman ever condemned to die in the U. S. , and the youngest woman on death row (The Straits Times, April 22, 2001). In 1994, Pike left her home in Durham, North Carolina, headed to Knoxville, Tennessee to work for the formal Job Corps Program. Pike was a high-school drop out and her mother had encouraged her to go join the Job Corps to at least get her some training. While there, Pike fell in love with a guy named Tadaryl Shipp, one year her junior. Together, Pike, and Shipp dabbled in devil worship together, along with their other friend, Shadolla Peterson. Pike became jealous of a fellow Job Corps worker, Colleen Slemmer, thinking that she was in love with Shipp and was trying to steal her boyfriend. Even though Slemmer kept trying to reassure Pike that she had no interest in her boyfriend, Pike did not believe her. Colleen Slemmer told her mother that she would wake up in the middle of the night and Christa Pike would be standing over her, she was very scared of Pike. Pike set out on a vengeance, she didn’t believe that Slemmer wasn’t in love with Shipp. Christa Pike, along with Tadaryl Shipp and Shadolla Peterson, lured Slemmer to Tyson Park, offering her marijuana as a peace offering. All four of them signed out of the dorm on the night of January 12, 1995, and that is when the horror began. Pike and her boyfriend, Shipp, tortured Colleen Slemmer for 30 to forty-five minutes with a box cutter and a small meat cleaver, and they even carved a swastika symbol on her chest while she was still alive. They got bored with cutting her, so pike picked up a chunk of asphalt and smashed Slemmers head again and again. Finally, after about an hour of torture, she was dead. Pike picked up a piece of Slemmers skull, placed it in her jacket pocket, and the three returned back to the dorm. The three was arrested within thirty-six hours of committing the crime. It took only two and one-half hours to convict Christa Pike guilty on both counts of murder and conspiracy. Pike was sentenced to death by electrocution for the murder charge and was given twenty-five years for the conspiracy charge. Pike was also charged with attempted 1st degree murder on August 12, 2004, when she strangled inmate Patricia Jones with a shoe string, nearly choking her to death. In her final round of state court appeals, Pike’s defense team tried to persuade the appellate court to create a new class of killers who should be exempt from the death penalty-18-year-olds with a history of mental illness. In April 2011, a state appeals court rejected her effort to escape death row. The state Supreme Court will next review Pike’s latest appeal efforts. If Pike fails to win a reprieve from the high court, she then will be allowed to a federal appeal. But until the, Christa Pike will remain in her 810 cell at the end of the maximum security wing in Nashville, Tennessee, at the Tennessee Prison for Women. After doing research on Christa Pike, I contacted the Tennessee Women for Prison and sent my request to get an interview with her, but as of today, I have not received any response. In reading up on Pike, I have found that she does not do many interviews, and she does not write many people back that have written to her. In the interviews I have watched about her, I personally believe that she does not have any remorse for the crimes she committed and therefore, she deserves to sit in her 810 cell and think about how lucky she is to be alive.