The latest issue of the report, “Death Penalty for Female Offenders,” has been released by Professor Victor Streib of the Ohio Northern University School of Law. The report includes national trends regarding women and the death penalty and case details about individual female death row inmates from 1973 through June 30, 2009. The report notes that while women account for one in ten murder arrests (10%), only one in forty-nine death sentences imposed at trial are for women (2%); women account for one in sixty-two people on death row (1.6%), and only one in one hundred and six (0.9%) of people actually executed in the modern era have been women. Additionally, almost half of the women now on death row were sentenced in domestic cases, with the victims being husbands, boyfriends, or their children. The leading states for sentencing women to death in the modern era are Texas (19), California (18), Florida (17), and North Carolina (16). The full report may be read here.

(V. Streib, “Death Penalty for Female Offenders,” June 2009). See Studies and Women.