Capital Punishment of Female Offenders: Present Female Death Row Inmates and Death Sentences and Executions of Female Offenders, January 1, 1973 to May 1, 1994

• NCJ Number: 149196
• Author(s): V L Streib
• Date Published: 1994
• Length: 15 pages
• Sale Source: National Institute of Justice/; Cleveland State University
• Publication Type: Survey
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

Both the female death sentencing rate and the female death row population remain very small compared to their male counterparts.

Abstract

Only 511 female offenders have been executed in the U.S. since 1608; these constitute less than 3 percent of the total number of executions. Of the 232 offenders executed since the Supreme Court Furman decision in 1972, only one has been a woman. The annual rate of death sentences for female offenders has remained constant at around five, representing 2 percent of the annual total. Of the 99 women sentenced to death since 1973, 61 have had their sentences reversed or commuted to life imprisonment; 34 women (with 37 sentences imposed on them) remain on death row. These 34 offenders constitute 1.2 percent of the total death row population and 0.07 percent of the female inmate population in the U.S. 3 tables and 2 appendixes