Women on death row

By Alisa Stingley
astingley@gannett.com


Brandy Holmes arrived Feb. 23 at Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women at St. Gabriel and was issued the standard death-row inmate uniform: a red jumpsuit.

Sentenced to death Feb. 16 in Caddo Parish for killing a local retired minister, former Shreveporter Holmes, 26, was the first new death-row inmate at LCIW in nearly 11 years. Antoinette Frank, a New Orleans policewoman sentenced to death in late 1995, now has company.









Historically, few women in Louisiana or the rest of the nation have been given the ultimate judicial penalty. But is that changing?

Fifteen years ago, in 1991, there were 36 women under death penalty sentences in the United States, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. At the end of 2005, there were 48 women on death row, according to the latest statistics from a leading academic researcher.

Women serving death sentences reached a high of 54 in 2000, according to Justice Statistics numbers. Yet executions of women remain rare: one in 2005, compared to 59 executions of men nationwide.

The "stereotypical image" of women has kept many off death row, said Marianne Fisher-Giorlando, professor of criminal justice at Grambling State University.

"It's simply (the idea) that women aren't capable of doing such a thing," she said.

The last woman executed in Louisiana was Shreveporter Toni Jo Henry in 1942. Before her, only two women were put to death in the 20th century.

Besides the two on death row now, one other Louisiana woman was sentenced to death, Catherine Dodds, but her sentence was reversed in 1976.

The last man in Louisiana to be executed was Leslie Martin, of Calcasieu Parish, on May 10, 2002. He had been convicted in the killing of a college student and had been on death row since September 1992.

Louisiana men are put to death by lethal injection at the men's prison, Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola.

That's also where a woman would meet her fate, after being transported from St. Gabriel.

Yet as death penalty appeals go on for years, it may not be soon that either Louisiana woman on death row will be executed.

Equal treatment for crimes

One reason the nation may be seeing more women receiving death sentences is that as women have sought equal status with men on many levels -- work, education opportunities, social status -- juries seem to be applying justice with equality in mind as well.

"Juries think women want to be considered equally. ... OK, you want to be treated equally and we'll convict you also," Fisher-Giorlando said.

Experts say it's difficult to pinpoint a trend regarding women and the death penalty, since their numbers are small. Since 1973, only 155 death sentences have been handed down to women, compared to 7,544 for men, according to research by Ohio law professor Victor L. Streib.

Year by year, the statistics go up and down.

For example, five women received death sentences in 2004, two in 2003, five in 2002 and two in 2001, according to Streib.

"There have always been so very few," said Streib, a leading researcher on women and the death penalty and a professor at Ohio Northern University College of Law in Ada, Ohio. His report, "Death Penalty for Female Offenders, January 1, 1973, through June 30, 2005," is considered the statistical bible on the subject.

"The conventional wisdom has been the more the client is represented as the traditional feminine woman, she won't get sentenced to death," Streib said last week. "The more she is seen as tough and aggressive, the more likely she is to be sentenced to death."

In Louisiana, the expectation is that men are more likely to make up the state's death-row population. Example: Angola has 101 cells reserved for death row inmates, with 83 occupied.

LCIW has only four cells dedicated for women on death row.

Dan Cain, associate professor of criminal justice at Bossier Parish Community College, agreed with Fisher-Giorlando that juries mostly have been kinder to women.

"I think juries tend to look at females with a little more special consideration. ... What aggravates me is I see so many females given such a lenient consequence to their behaviors. Had the same thing been committed by any male, he would have been held accountable in a much more serious way," he said.

"Our society, in general, is trying to find a reason and excuse to allow females more opportunities to be rehabilitated, given that special chance. I surely don't see that quite as much with the male."

But death penalty juries may be reversing that trend, Cain said, as more women commit crimes. Since 1990 the number of female defendants convicted of felonies in state courts has grown at more than two times the rate of increase in male defendants, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. And in 2001, women made up 6.6 percent of state prison inmates, up from 6 percent in 1995.

Policy dictates justice

Changes in police arrest policies and in sentencing guidelines have influenced the way the justice system deals with violent women offenders, said Fisher-Giorlando.

"Criminal justice doesn't have the leeway it used to have when it looked at a woman," said Fisher-Giorlando, citing mandatory arrest policies in domestic violence cases and judicial guidelines that set sentences for certain crimes.

Caddo District Attorney Paul Carmouche said there are "plenty" of cases of second-degree murder charges against women, but few that fit the definition of first-degree murder, which, for example, would involve armed robbery, rape or aggravated burglary and would automatically be a death penalty case. That's one reason there are fewer women under death sentences, he said.

"We don't normally see women defendants in those circumstances where it fits the definition," Carmouche said, adding that he could not recall any cases where the Caddo office sought the death penalty against a woman before the Holmes case.

Yet these kinds of cases may become less rare in the future, he said.

"That's an unfortunate fact, based on the fact that women are getting involved in more violent crimes," Carmouche said. "It's just a matter of time until we have more cases where there is the definition of first-degree murder."


©The Times
March 5, 2006