Women on Death Row in the United States

by Sandra Babcock, Nathalie Greenfield, and Kathryn Adamson*

Volume 46 Issue 1

The full text of this article may be downloaded by clicking on the PDF link.

Introduction

This Article presents a comprehensive study of forty-eight persons sentenced to death between 1990 and 2022 who were legally recognized as women at the time of their trials. Our research is the first of its kind to conduct a holistic and intersectional analysis of the factors driving women’s death sentences. It reveals commonalities across women’s cases, delving into their experiences of motherhood, gender-based violence (“GBV”), and prior involvement with the criminal legal system. We also explore the nature of the women’s crimes of conviction, including the role of male codefendants and the state’s use of aggravating factors. Finally, we reveal for the first time the extent to which capital prosecutions are dominated by men—including judges, elected district attorneys, defense attorneys, and juror forepersons.

We present our data against the backdrop of prevalent theories that seek to explain both the rarity of women’s executions and the reasons why certain women are singled out for the harshest punishment provided by law. We explain why those frameworks are inadequate to understand the role that systemic gender bias plays in women’s capital prosecutions. We conclude by arguing for more nuanced research that embraces the complexities in women’s capital cases and accounts for the presence of systemic and intersectional discrimination.

* Sandra Babcock is a Clinical Professor of Law at Cornell Law School. Nathalie Greenfield is an Adjunct Professor of Law at Cornell Law School and an Associate Attorney and Mitigation Specialist at Phillips Black, Inc. Kathryn Adamson is a consultant with the Center on Gender and Extreme Sentencing and the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide. We wish, first and foremost, to thank the women on death row who have shared their experiences with us. We are also very grateful to the numerous capital post-conviction lawyers who provided critical information and documents that allowed us to carry out this research. Thank you to our Cornell faculty colleagues, especially John Blume, Sheri Johnson, and Jeff Rachlinski, who provided valuable feedback. Thanks also to our excellent cohort of researchers and colleagues who helped us analyze our data and think through methodological questions, including Maci East, Jacqueline Groskaufmanis, Randi Kepecs, Paulina Lucio Maymon, Gabriela Markolovic, and Sofía López Cartagena.