Arkansas executes first woman in 150 years
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) - A former nurse who asked for the death penalty for drugging and suffocating her two children was executed by injection Tuesday night in Arkansas' first execution of a woman in more than 150 years.
Christina Marie Riggs, 28, was the fifth woman executed in the United States since the Supreme Court lifted a ban on capital punishment in 1976.
She had withdrawn all appeals and chose not to seek clemency from Gov. Mike Huckabee.
Riggs told authorities that …showed first 85 words of 374 total…
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…showed last 85 words of 374 total…children had become an inconvenience to her. They said she left the children by themselves while she competed in karaoke contests and had plotted their deaths for weeks.
The last woman executed in Arkansas was Lavinia Burnett, hanged in 1845 for being an accessory to murder.
Nationally, the first woman executed since 1976 was Velma Barfield, who died by injection in North Carolina in 1984 for poisoning her boyfriend. The most recent was Betty Lou Beets, put to death in Texas in February for murdering her fifth husband.
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