Women rarely given death penalty in Oklahoma for crimes
After two years in prison, Nannie Doss told reporters she was bored with life behind bars.
“I wish the authorities here would let me be tried in Kansas or North Carolina,” she said. “Maybe they would give me the electric chair.”
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, Oklahoma never executed a woman in the electric chair. The state did make headlines in 2001, however, when it executed three women by lethal injection in the same year.
Would Doss — who confessed to poisoning four of her five husbands in 1954 — or other women convicted of murder decades ago still receive life sentences today?
“Experts have been hesitant to say for sure whether there's gender bias going on, but certainly women are rarely executed,” said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Center.
Cheerful widow
Doss left a trail of murders throughout the South between the 1920s and 1954. Her proclaimed victims included four husbands, her mother, her sister and a mother-in-law. Her first husband escaped a poisoning attempt. Always cheerful, Doss was described by the media as the “smiling granny” and “lonely hearts widow.”
She confessed to the murders after she was arrested in Tulsa in connection with the arsenic death of her fifth mate, Samuel Doss.
Nannie Doss pleaded guilty to a murder charge and was sentenced to life instead of death because a judge thought she was insane, even though medical evaluations proved otherwise.
Mental illnesses
Dieter said women who committed these types of crimes in the early 20th century might have been dealt with outside of the criminal justice system and thought to be mentally unstable.
“Mothers did kill children and husbands, but they were dealt with sort of outside. It was unexpected. It was dealt with quietly, perhaps, through a mental facility,” he said. “Because it was so rare, that was something that was supposed to teach a lesson to deter other crimes.”
To receive the death penalty, Dieter said, women often must commit some type of aggravated offense. Women are more likely to kill relatives or spouses, but less likely to commit heinous crimes, he said.
About 10 percent of murders are committed by women, but only 2 percent of death sentences are given to women. Even then there's a chance of overturning the sentence, so even fewer women are executed, Dieter said.
“Oklahoma has had 97 executions (since 1976). But for three of them to be women in the modern era, that's 3 percent. Nationally, it's less than 1 percent,” he said.
Oklahoma inmates
Jerry Massie, spokesman for the state Department of Corrections, said Oklahoma is No. 1 in the nation for the number of women incarcerated on a per-capita basis. He said the state has about 2,600 female offenders.
Of that number, 122 women are serving life sentences with the possibility of parole and 53 are serving life without the possibility of parole, Massie said.
At the time Doss was convicted of murdering several relatives, only seven women were serving life terms at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester.
Oklahoma currently has one woman on death row — Brenda Andrew — who was sentenced to die for the Nov. 20, 2001, fatal shooting of her estranged husband, Oklahoma City ad executive Rob Andrew.
Convincing a jury
Wanda Jean Allen, a black woman convicted of killing her lesbian lover in 1988, was the first woman executed by lethal injection in Oklahoma. It was January 2001.
She was the first woman put to death in the state since 1903, four years before statehood.
Oklahoma County Assistant District Attorney Sandra Elliott, the prosecutor on the case, said she sought the death penalty because Allen had a prior assault and manslaughter case.
Throughout her 27 years with the district attorney's office, Elliott has handled many death penalty cases for men but only one for a woman.
Dieter said he thinks jurors sometimes give women the death penalty if they can't relate to her or the crime she committed. Some jurors might see women as victims, he said.
Elliott disagreed, saying the jury's decision is often based on the nature of the offense and the defendant's criminal history.
“It's hard to seek the death penalty against anybody. The vast majority of citizens here don't want to kill anybody,” Elliott said. “If you're like the average person, it's difficult to ask anyone to do that job.
“When Wanda Jean was executed, I lit a candle and said a prayer for her.”
Women and the death penalty
Death sentences and executions of female offenders are rare when compared to male offenders. Women are more likely to be dropped out of the capital punishment system the further the case progresses. Women account for:
Source: Death Penalty Information Center
Death Penalty Information
The death penalty law was enacted in 1977 by the state Legislature. The method is by lethal injection. The original death penalty law in Oklahoma called for executions to be carried out by electrocution. That law was ruled unconstitutional as it was administered when the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976.
Oklahoma executed 176 men and three women between 1915 and 2011 at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary. Eighty-two were executed by electrocution, one by hanging (a federal prisoner) and 96 by lethal injection. The last execution by electrocution took place in 1966. The first execution by lethal injection in Oklahoma occurred on Sept. 10, 1990, when Charles Troy Coleman, who was convicted in 1979 of first-degree murder in Muskogee County, was executed.
Execution Process
Drugs used for lethal injection:
Two intravenous lines are inserted, one in each arm. The drugs are injected by hand-held syringes simultaneously into the two lines. The sequence is in the order listed above. Three executioners take part with each one injecting one of the drugs.
Tiffany Gibson has worked for The Oklahoman since August 2011 and is a member of the enterprise team and digital desk. In addition to writing and web editing, she creates interactive features for NewsOK.com and assists with data visualization and... Read more ›