Lisa Coleman executed by lethal injection after final appeal rejected

 

Lisa Coleman became the fifteenth American woman to be executed since 1976, given a lethal dose of compounded pentobarbital. Photograph: Pat Sullivan/AP

Lisa Coleman became the fifteenth American woman to be executed since 1976 when she was given a lethal injection in Texas on Wednesday evening for her role in the starvation death and torture of her partner's nine-year-old son.
The US supreme court rejected Coleman's final appeal for a stay earlier in the day. That cleared the path for the 38-year-old to be put to death using compounded pentobarbital from a supplier that Texas has refused to disclose, amid questions about its expiration date and quality.

Nearly 1,400 people have been executed in the US since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976. Even though women commit about 10% of all homicides they comprise 1% of inmates put to death, according to figures from the Death Penalty Information Centre. Only seven states – Texas, Florida, Oklahoma, Alabama, North Carolina, Arkansas and Virginia – have executed female prisoners in the past three decades.
Court documents indicated that Davontae Williams had been restrained and repeatedly beaten before his death from malnutrition with pneumonia in July 2004. A pediatrician testified that the boy's emaciated corpse showed more than 250 separate injuries, including burns and scars. A blood stain suggested he had been struck with a golf club.
Paramedics found his body at the home in an apartment complex in Arlington, near Dallas, that Coleman shared with her lover, Marcella Williams. He weighed less than 36 pounds (16.3 kg), about the average weight for a boy half his age.
Committing murder during a kidnapping is among the criteria which can raise a charge in Texas to capital murder. While not denying Coleman's part in the crime, her attorneys had argued in appeals that she was innocent of capital murder because she did not kidnap the child by hiding him inside the apartment. They produced witnesses who testified that they had seen him outside on several occasions. But appeals courts decided that even though he was not taken from his home, Coleman had effectively kidnapped Davontae because he had been restrained and kept away from others.
Coleman's trial defence team argued that the death was accidental and that she had endured a deeply troubled upbringing, including suffering physical and sexual assaults, which left her with psychological scars and little sense of how to behave appropriately towards a child in her care. Texas child protective services investigated the couple on several occasions but eventually lost track of them.
Marcella Williams was tried after Coleman, took a plea deal and was given a life sentence. The 33-year-old will be eligible for parole in 2044. Texas is by far the nation's executions leader, with 517 inmates put to death in the past 32 years. That represents 37% of the national total, though Texas comprises about 8% of the US population. The state has carried out nine executions this year and has another eight scheduled between 15 October and 18 March. The three most recent executions of women in the US have been in Texas: Coleman, Suzanne Basso last February and Kimberly McCarthy in June last year. Seven women remain on Texas death row, including Linda Carty, a British citizen born on the Caribbean island of St Kitts.
In the death chamber, Coleman reportedly smiled and acknowledged friends and an aunt who were watching through a window, said she loved the other women on Texas' death row and that they should "keep their heads up". She mouthed an audible kiss and added: "I'm all right. Tell them I finished strong … God is good." Shortly before she closed her eyes and stopped moving, she said, "Love you all."
Coleman was pronounced dead at the state penitentiary in Huntsville, near Houston, at 6.24pm central time, 12 minutes after officials began to administer the lethal dose of the sedative.
Information from the Associated Press was used in this re