Female Executions in the US: Death Row, Rarity, and Legal Bars

Female executions in the US are among the rarest events in American criminal law. Since the Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to resume in 1976, eighteen women have been put to death, roughly 1% of all executions in that span, even though women commit about 10% of the country’s homicides. As of October 2025, 47 women were held on death rows across the country, about 2% of the total death-sentenced population.1Death Penalty Information Center. Women

The Eighteen Women Executed Since 1976

No woman was executed in the modern era until 1984, when North Carolina put Velma Barfield to death for poisoning her boyfriend. Fourteen years passed before the next execution of a woman. Since 1998, they have occurred sporadically, spread across four decades and multiple jurisdictions, with most carried out in southern states.

A handful of these cases shaped the public conversation about capital punishment. Karla Faye Tucker’s 1998 execution in Texas drew national attention after her widely publicized religious conversion on death row. Aileen Wuornos was executed in Florida in 2002 for killing multiple men along Florida highways. Lisa Montgomery, put to death by the federal government in January 2021, was the first woman executed under federal authority in more than 67 years. She had been convicted of strangling a pregnant woman and taking the unborn child. Post-conviction investigators later documented evidence of brain injury and severe childhood abuse that her trial lawyers had not adequately presented to the jury.2Death Penalty Information Center. What to Know: Women and the Death Penalty

The most recent execution of a woman was Amber McLaughlin in Missouri in January 2023. Across the longer historical record going back to 1608, roughly 575 women have been executed in what is now the United States, about 3.6% of all confirmed executions during that span.3Death Penalty Information Center. Executions of Women

Women on Death Row Now

California holds the largest number of women under a death sentence, followed by Texas and Alabama. Women are also on death row in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Tennessee. Twenty-three states have abolished the death penalty entirely, and others maintain moratoriums that halt executions for all inmates.4Death Penalty Information Center. State by State

Time on death row is measured in decades, not years. More than half of all death-sentenced prisoners in the U.S. have been waiting over 18 years, and the figure keeps growing.5Death Penalty Information Center. Time on Death Row A death sentence is far more likely to end through natural death, a successful appeal, or a commutation than through execution.

Why Women Are Rarely Sentenced to Death

The gap between women’s share of murders and their share of death sentences is large. Women commit roughly 10% of homicides but receive only about 2% of death sentences. No single factor explains that disparity; several overlap.

The type of crime matters. Most women sentenced to death killed a family member or intimate partner, and more than half were convicted in cases involving abusive relationships.2Death Penalty Information Center. What to Know: Women and the Death Penalty Prosecutors seeking a death sentence typically need to prove aggravating factors like premeditation combined with financial motive, multiple victims, or the killing of a child. Domestic killings, even brutal ones, do not always fit those statutory aggravators the way stranger killings or killings committed during other felonies do.

Gender bias also runs through the system in complicated ways. Research shows female defendants are treated differently at every stage of prosecution. Juries may be more reluctant to impose death on a woman, and prosecutors may be less inclined to seek it. Whether that reflects appropriate consideration of context or paternalism depends on who you ask, but the statistical effect is clear.

Histories of Abuse and Trauma

At least 96% of women on death row experienced gender-based violence before they were incarcerated.2Death Penalty Information Center. What to Know: Women and the Death Penalty The legal system’s record of accounting for that history is poor. Defense attorneys in capital cases are supposed to present mitigating evidence about a defendant’s background, but poverty often leaves defendants without the expert witnesses and investigators needed to build that case. Lisa Montgomery’s trial is the starkest recent example: her jury never heard critical details about her childhood sexual abuse, brain injury, or resulting mental illness because her inexperienced defense team did not develop the evidence.

The Race of the Victim

The victim’s race shapes which cases become capital cases. A 2024 study reexamining decades of homicide data found that when the victim was a white woman, prosecutors were more likely to seek death, juries were more likely to impose it, and the defendant was more likely to eventually be executed. The odds of a death sentence were roughly 16 times greater when the victim was a white woman compared to a Black male victim, and about six times greater compared to a Black female victim. The patterns held after researchers controlled for crime severity.6Death Penalty Information Center. What to Know: Race of Victim Effect and the Death Penalty Cases involving white female victims are disproportionately funneled toward death sentences; cases involving Black victims of any gender are much less likely to be prosecuted capitally.

Legal Bars to Execution

Federal law and Supreme Court decisions create several absolute bars to execution regardless of the crime. These apply equally to men and women, with pregnancy the only sex-specific rule.

In practice, the insanity and intellectual-disability bars generate the most litigation, because courts must evaluate clinical evidence and there is no bright-line test for either.

How a Death Sentence Actually Ends

A death sentence triggers a long appellate process. Every capital defendant has the right to a direct appeal, in which the appellate court reviews the trial record for legal errors. If that fails, the defendant can file a state habeas corpus petition raising claims beyond the trial record, such as newly discovered evidence or ineffective legal representation.

Only after exhausting state remedies can a death-sentenced prisoner file a federal habeas petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. Federal courts can grant relief if the state court’s decision was contrary to clearly established federal law as determined by the Supreme Court, or if it unreasonably determined the facts based on the evidence.11Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 U.S. Code 2254 – State Custody; Remedies in Federal Courts It is a deliberately high bar. Federal courts presume the state court got the facts right, and the prisoner bears the burden of rebutting that presumption with clear and convincing evidence.

Ineffective assistance of counsel is one of the most common grounds for relief in capital cases. The defendant must show both that the lawyer’s performance fell below an objective standard of reasonableness and that the errors affected the outcome. Courts give defense attorneys wide latitude, so the claim is raised constantly but succeeds rarely. In female capital cases, it often centers on the trial lawyer’s failure to investigate and present evidence of abuse, trauma, or mental illness.

Clemency is the final safety valve. A governor or pardons board can commute a death sentence to life imprisonment even after every appeal has failed. Women on death row have historically received clemency at a higher rate than men, though the absolute numbers are small enough that a few cases can shift the percentages. A strong petition typically presents trial transcripts, appellate records, psychiatric evaluations, medical records, and evidence of rehabilitation. For women whose trial lawyers failed to develop mitigating evidence, clemency often becomes the first real opportunity to present the full scope of their history. Federal petitioners file through the Office of the Pardon Attorney; state processes vary but generally involve a pardons board or the governor’s office.12United States Department of Justice. Apply for Clemency

One woman has been fully exonerated from death row in the modern era: Sabrina Butler, wrongly convicted in Mississippi. The appeals process, however slow, serves a real function.

The Federal Picture in 2026

The federal death penalty landscape shifted in April 2026, when the Department of Justice rescinded the moratorium on federal executions that had been in place under the Biden administration. That earlier pause was based on concerns about the lethal injection protocol. The current administration reinstated the pentobarbital-based injection protocol used during the first Trump administration and directed the Bureau of Prisons to expand its execution protocol to include additional methods such as firing squad. The Department also ordered the Bureau of Prisons to examine constructing additional execution facilities.13United States Department of Justice. The Justice Department Takes Actions to Strengthen the Federal Death Penalty

No women currently sit on federal death row. Lisa Montgomery was the only woman under a federal death sentence before her execution in 2021. Whether new federal capital prosecutions will produce death sentences for female defendants is an open question, but the machinery is operational again.