Death row women a rarity
By Janice Morse • jmorse@enquirer.com • September 7, 2009

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The Hamilton woman accused of killing her infant son last month, Asuncion Avila-Villa, is among a mere handful of women ever to face a possible death sentence in Southwest Ohio or Northern Kentucky.


That's partly because most death-penalty-eligible crimes are committed by men, authorities say. But is society biased against pursuing or imposing the death penalty when the accused or convicted offender happens to be a woman?

Several prosecutors in the region say they don't hesitate to seek the death penalty when the crime fits the criteria, regardless of the accused's gender.

But in Ohio history, only four executions of women are on record. The last execution of a woman in Ohio was 55 years ago; the state has put 81 men to death since then.

Kentucky last executed a woman in 1868, according to law professor and death-penalty researcher Victor L. Streib.

He also notes that women account for about 10 percent of murder arrests, yet make up only 1.6 percent of the nation's Death Row population and less than 1 percent of offenders actually executed since 1973.

Even Texas, known for its high execution rate, has not executed a woman since 2005 - also the last time a woman has been executed anywhere in the U.S., Streib's research shows.

Such data show "a fairly strong predisposition against sentencing female offenders to death, and certainly against actually executing them," Streib says in his 2006 book, "The Fairer Death: Executing Women in Ohio."

Streib says his reports take no position on "the legality, the wisdom or the morality of the death penalty for female offenders," but he hopes his 25 years of research on women and the death penalty will fuel intelligent debate on the topic.

Avila-Villa, 26, is accused of killing her 35-day-old son to prevent authorities from learning that the child had been fathered by a teenaged boy. Police found the baby in the trash Aug. 25 while investigating Avila-Villa's report that the baby's father - who she said was 21 - had taken him.

Baby Israel Santos died from a crushed skull. He also suffered a broken arm and was malnourished.

Avila-Villa is denying charges of aggravated murder, gross abuse of a corpse, tampering with evidence and unlawful sexual conduct with a minor - the purported teen father. An indictment alleges she had sex with a boy between the ages of 13 and 16 from September through November last year.

A defense lawyer said Avila-Villa may suffer from an mental problem. Her next hearing is set for Sept. 30.

If Avila-Villa does end up on Ohio's Death Row, she would join Donna Roberts, 65, convicted in 2003 of recruiting a man to kill her common-law husband in northeast Ohio. All the state's other 167 condemned prisoners are men.

Kentucky counts a lone woman, Virginia Caudill, 49, among its 36 Death Row inmates. She was convicted of killing an elderly woman in Fayette County.

Had Avila-Villa's alleged crime happened in Kentucky, the case likely would be ineligible for capital punishment. There, the law excludes killing a child under 13 from capital crimes, says Kenton County Prosecutor Rob Sanders.

He is prosecuting two men accused of killing infants, but neither faces the death penalty. Sanders is outraged by such cases but sees little chance of getting the state law changed at a time when government agencies are faced with pressing economic problems.

But four Kenton County defendants, including two women, do face possible execution if convicted in the death of Shawn Davis, 28, of Covington, whose burned body was found in January.

Several other Greater Cincinnati prosecutors were hard-pressed to point out death penalty cases pursued against women.

"The vast, vast, vast majority of aggravated murders are committed by men. If there were a woman who we believed committed a death-penalty-eligible crime, we would definitely seek it," Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters said.

No such cases have crossed his desk during his two stints as head prosecutor, 1992-99 and 2004-present.

But Deters does recall a few cases of Hamilton County women's death sentences being commuted to life in prison before he became prosecutor. There also have been a number of cases in which Ohio women's death sentences were reversed or the convicts were granted clemency.

Mike Allen, Hamilton County prosecutor from 1999-2004, said, "There were no female capital cases on my watch as prosecutor. If any were presented to me, I would have evaluated them using the same criteria as I did with cases involving men - that is, did their conduct fit one of the specifications that would elevate a homicide to a death-penalty case?"

Such specifications include murder for hire, killing a law-enforcement officer, killing in the course of certain other felonies, and the killing of a child under age 13, among others.

Allen notes that, in recent years, since Ohio has allowed juries the option of imposing life without parole as a sentence, it has become increasingly difficult to get a jury to sentence any offender to death. "I believe it would be even more difficult with a female defendant," he said.

In Warren County, no one can remember a female facing a capital case in at least 20 years.

In Clermont County, Daniel "Woody" Breyer, chief deputy prosecutor, couldn't recall a woman being charged with a capital offense in his two decades there.

In Butler County, where Avila-Villa's case is pending, another woman, Carin Madden, had faced the death penalty a decade ago. Like Avila-Villa, her infant, too, was found in the trash.

Madden, now 30, pleaded guilty to aggravated murder to avoid a possible death sentence. She will be eligible for parole in 2019 but could remain in prison for life.

Butler County Prosecutor Robin Piper says the reason Avila-Villa faces a possible death sentence, regardless of her gender, is simple: The case fits the criteria set out in state law.

"You have to meet a lot of statutory factors to even have a capital-punishment case," he said.

"Because of the statutory criteria, you don't have that many capital cases to begin with, maybe two or three at a time...You just don't have a lot of women who are meeting that criteria."

He's not sure whether jurors might feel more squeamish about the prospect of putting a woman to death rather than a man.

"Trends change, people change," he said. "Now we're seeing equal rights, equal opportunity, equal punishment."

He said every case comes with its own unique facts; every defendant, with a unique life history. And a jury must weigh all those factors when deciding whether a death sentence is warranted.

"Every defendant usually can come up with something to say that this should be considered mitigation," he said, ranging from being abused as a child to growing up in a bad neighborhood. Mitigating factors are those that would tend to weigh against imposing the harshest sentence available.

Asked whether he thinks a jury might be reluctant to impose a death sentence against a female defendant, Piper said: "If I was a juror and somebody beat a baby to death, to me, gender wouldn't be a mitigating factor. But maybe to someone else, that would be."

Staff writer Barrett J. Brunsman contributed
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