Woman in Tennessee could be state's first woman executed since 1819

In 1995, three teenagers tortured and killed their victim in a remote area near the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. According to the non-profit organization Death Penalty Information Center, the 50-year-old is the only one of the three who was sentenced to death. Her boyfriend at the time was 17 at the time of the crime and was sentenced to life in prison.

According to the Tennessee government's official website, the convict is the only woman currently serving a sentence on death row in the US state. If her execution goes ahead as planned on September 30, 2026, it would be the first time a woman has been executed in Tennessee since 1819, according to the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide.

In the United States, around two percent of those on death row are women. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, 18 women have been executed in the United States since 1976. That would correspond to around one percent of all executions. The death penalty is permitted in more than two dozen of the 50 states, although in many places it is no longer carried out. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, 28 criminals have been executed in the United States this year through September 24.

In addition to lethal injection, executions in the United States are carried out, among other things, by the electric chair or - much less often - by firing squad. According to a recent representative survey by the Pew Research Center, two-thirds of adults in the United States (66 percent) support the death penalty for people convicted of murder. At the same time, a majority (59 percent) are of the opinion that the death penalty has no deterrent effect on serious crimes.