[Author’s Name]
[Institution’s Name]
Essay on Female Offenders and the Death Penalty
Beginning with the first legislative enactments of modern death penalty statutes in 1973, we now have over thirty-two years of death sentences being imposed in American jurisdictions. The burdens of constant corrections and updates, coupled with the difficulties of worldwide distribution of regular issues of a printed, hard copy report, led us to this electronic format. The data herein are updated as often and as quickly as possible. However, given the difficulty of gathering complete information from all jurisdictions and as soon as cases develop, these reports may under-report the number of female offenders under death sentences.
The subjects of these reports are female offenders sentenced to death. They are not all referred to as women, since some were as young as age fifteen at the time of their crimes. However, no such very young female offenders are currently under death sentences. One final source of confusion and occasional inaccuracy is the difference between being legally under a sentence of death and being physically on a prison’s death row. 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 when the individual has just been sentenced to death but not yet transported to the death row prison......
