Angela McAnulty, Only Woman on Oregon’s Death Row, Resentenced to Life in Prison

The only woman on Oregon​’s death row has been resen­tenced to life in prison. On August 3, 2020, the Lane County Circuit Court accept­ed a set­tle­ment agree­ment in which Lane County pros­e­cu­tors agreed to drop their appeal of a 2019 rul­ing over­turn­ing the death sen­tence imposed on Angela McAnulty (pic­tured) in February 2011 and McAnulty agreed to drop her appeals of her murder conviction.

McAnulty is the only woman to have been sen­tenced to death in the state of Oregon since vot­ers rein­stat­ed cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the state in 1984.

McAnulty was sen­tenced to death for the aggra­vat­ed mur­der of her 15-year-old daugh­ter, Jeanette Maples, in 2009. She was rep­re­sent­ed at tri­al by court-appoint­ed coun­sel Kenneth Hadley and Steven Krasik, who were simul­ta­ne­ous­ly han­dling a sec­ond cap­i­tal case in which Joshua and Bruce Turnidge were sen­tenced to death in Marion County for a fatal bank bomb­ing in Woodburn, Oregon. The Turnidge case con­clud­ed December 22, 2010 and, expect­ing Lane County pros­e­cu­tors to offer a plea deal for McAnulty, the lawyers did not con­duct an inves­ti­ga­tion into avail­able mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence in McAnulty’s case. 

The case did not set­tle, and the tri­al court denied the lawyers’ motion for a con­tin­u­ance to per­mit them to prop­er­ly pre­pare McAnulty’s defense. On the first day of tri­al, defense coun­sel advised her to plead guilty to the aggra­vat­ed mur­der charges with­out an agree­ment from the pros­e­cu­tion that it would drop the death penal­ty. The case pro­ceed­ed to the penal­ty phase and the jury sen­tenced McAnulty to death. The Oregon Supreme Court upheld her con­vic­tion and death sen­tence in 2014. 

After a 12-day post-con­vic­tion hear­ing, Judge J. Burdette Pratt over­turned McAnulty’s con­vic­tion and death sen­tence on July 10, 2019. Pratt ruled that tri­al coun­sel had been inef­fec­tive ​“in advis­ing [McAnulty] to plead guilty to the charge of Aggravated Murder with­out any con­ces­sions in return from the state.” He also deter­mined that coun­sel had been inef­fec­tive in the penal­ty phase of tri­al in fail­ing to inves­ti­gate and present evi­dence to show that McAnulty did not pose a future dan­ger to soci­ety — a pre­req­ui­site to a death ver­dict under Oregon law — and ​“in fail­ing to con­duct an ade­quate inves­ti­ga­tion and present evi­dence regard­ing [her] men­tal health and psy­cho­log­i­cal trau­ma” as part of the defense case for life.

The pros­e­cu­tion appealed the court’s rul­ing, and McAnulty cross-appealed on the claims she had raised that the court reject­ed, set­ting the stage for the settlement.

Soon after the state appealed, the Oregon state leg­is­la­ture approved and Governor Kate Brown signed into law SB 1013, which sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduced the scope of the state’s death-penal­ty statute. The new law lim­it­ed cap­i­tal mur­der to cas­es involv­ing acts of ter­ror­ism in which two or more peo­ple are killed, pre­med­i­tat­ed mur­ders of chil­dren aged thir­teen or younger, prison mur­ders com­mit­ted by those already incar­cer­at­ed for aggra­vat­ed mur­der, and pre­med­i­tat­ed mur­ders of police or cor­rec­tion­al offi­cers. The law applied to all new cap­i­tal tri­als, includ­ing McAnulty’s retrial. 

On July 29, pros­e­cu­tors and McAnulty met to final­ize a plea deal for life impris­on­ment with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole, the max­i­mum sen­tence allowed for her crime under the new law. Lane County District Attorney Patty Perlow stat­ed that ​“the set­tle­ment agree­ment pro­vides that the sen­tence of death is vacat­ed, and Angela McAnulty is sen­tenced to life impris­on­ment with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole.”

Maples’ step­fa­ther, Richard McAnulty, was also charged in the mur­der. He was tried sep­a­rate­ly and con­vict­ed in 2011, receiv­ing a life sen­tence with parole eli­gi­bil­i­ty after 25 years. He did not appeal his con­vic­tion or sentence. 

With McAnulty’s resen­tenc­ing, 52 women are now on death rows across the United States. The last woman exe­cut­ed in the United States was Georgia native Kelly Gissendaner, who died by lethal injec­tion in 2015.