Texas carried out its ninth execution of 2014, last night in Huntsville. It was the state's 517th post-Furman executions since 1982. There have been 30 executions in American death penalty states this year; a total of 1,389 post-Furman executions since 1977.
The Supreme Court order, denying a stay of execution, in Coleman v. Stephens is available in Adobe .pdf format.
"Arlington woman executed for abused boy’s death," is the AP report filed by Michael Graczyk, via the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
Lisa Coleman, an Arlington woman convicted of starving and torturing her girlfriend’s 9-year-old son to death a decade ago, was executed Wednesday evening.Coleman, 38, received a lethal injection of pentobarbital about an hour after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a last-day appeal.
Coleman smiled and nodded to several friends and an aunt who watched through a window, thanking them and expressing her love. She also said she loved the other women on Death Row and urged them to “keep their heads up.”
“I’m all right,” she said. “Tell them I finished strong. God is good.”
The Guardian posts, "Lisa Coleman executed by lethal injection after final appeal rejected," by Tom Dart.
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.
Additional coverage includes:
"Texas Executes Woman for Murder of 9-Year-Old," by Elizabeth Barber for Time.
"Lisa Coleman Becomes The Sixth Woman Executed By Texas Since 1982," by Tasneem Nashrulla and Claudia Koerner of BuzzFeed.
According to TDCJ, Texas state district courts have set two additional execution dates for this year, in October. Seven execution dates have already been set for 2015.
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