Amanda Carlos

Amanda Carlos is a journalism student at the University of Alabama and plans on attending law school. She has always had a passion for the law especially criminal law. For about 10 years she was a correctional nurse at various county jails, and state prisons in Missouri and Kansas.She was primarily in charge of distributing medications, managing the doctor’s schedule, and responding to medical emergencies. You can contact her at amandacarlos78@yahoo.com

Mothers Who Murder

Nov. 28, 2011

Ana Cardona

There are over 3,500 inmates on death row in the United States, spread out over the 34 states that still use the death penalty. Less than 1 percent of death row inmates are women and all 61 of them have been convicted of murder.

by Amanda Carlos

Since 2000, 11 states have executed 28 women. The last female executed was, Teresa Lewis, in Virginia on September 23, 2010. Lewis’s execution was controversial because her IQ score was 72 and 70 and below would have excluded her from being given the death sentence. Lewis along with two accomplices, Matthew Shallenberger and Rodney Fuller, killed her husband and stepson for insurance money. Shallenberger and Fuller were sentenced to life without parole by the same judge who sentenced Lewis to death calling her the mastermind of the murder.

Fourteen of the women on death row are there for murdering their own children. Here’s a look at the crimes they committed.