Letting Gender Decide: The Implements On The Death Penalty

3 Pages 665 Words

Letting Gender Decide: Inconsistencies in Implementing the Death Penalty

The death penalty system in the United States carries burdens such as political agendas, discrimination against certain offenders and victims, and even execution of the innocent. Among many imperfections, the death penalty system in the United States continues to carry an apparent preconception upon the sex of the offender. When the murderer becomes the murderess, disruption and confusion come in to our minds. Female offenders that are arrested for murder, are only very rarely are sentenced to death. If sentenced, they are seldom executed. It is difficult to understand why women have received such favored treatment, since the purposes allegedly served by capital punishment are applicable to both sexes. Despite strong leadership in the death sentencing and actual executions of males in Texas, Karla Faye Tucker’s execution was the first female execution since the Civil War in 1863.
Imagine your parents nestled up lying in bed, enjoying the last bit of The Johnny Carson show before falling asleep, when without warning a woman breaks into their home, enters the bedroom and maliciously hacks away at them with a pickax until they are dead. Once apprehended by Hunstville police Karla Faye Tucker was charged and given a fair trial. Tucker was justifiably found guilty of both counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to death by lethal injection. A request for an appeal was made and even though the basis behind the appeal had nothing to do with gender, but the gender issue became a huge question in the media. Tucker’s 1998 execution was accompanied by enormous media coverage in the United States as well as worldwide. The fact that Tucker was a very attractive, photogenic, articulate, white woman undoubtedly contributed to both the extensive media coverage and to the reluctance of the system to carry it through to the end. The inconsistency of ...