By Victor Streib
Professor of Law (retired)
Ohio Northern University
Beginning with the first legislative enactments of modern death penalty statutes in 1973, we now have nearly forty years of death sentences being imposed in American jurisdictions. This post-1973 time period is referred to as the current era of the death penalty, operating under quite different laws and procedures than did earlier death penalty eras. This report, now available primarily in electronic format, supersedes the written report, “Capital Punishment of Female Offenders,” generated quarterly by this author from 1984 through early 1998.
These reports chronicle the exact dates of imposition and reversal or removal of the death sentence by a court or executive officer. Therefore, the list of female offenders currently under death sentences excludes those for whom the sentence has been legally reversed or removed even if the case is still being reviewed or reconsidered. However, it is not uncommon for such a person to continue to be housed on the prison’s death row even though no longer legally under a death sentence. The list also includes those female offenders under death sentences who are housed temporarily in local jails or prisons rather than the jurisdiction’s death row prison. Such temporary housing typically occurs (1) when the individual has just been sentenced to death but not yet transported to the death row prison or (2) when she is serving as a witness or defendant in another trial or proceeding and must be located nearby. In either case, they are under sentences of death but are not physically on death row and often are not even known or listed by the prison officials.