A Texas woman has been executed for the 2004 torture and starvation death of her girlfriend's 9-year-old son.
Twenty-eight-year-old Lisa Ann Coleman died at 6:24 Wednesday evening. The Supreme Court denied her final appeal hours before the execution.
It is rare for a woman to be executed in the states. She is only the 15th woman to be executed since the death penalty resumed in 1976. But, during that same amount of time, around 1,400 men have been put to death.
The journalists who were present at the time of the execution are reporting the death went smoothly and Coleman seemed peaceful. She was pronounced dead 12 minutes after being lethally injected.
Something WFAA impliedwas almost too quick considering her crime. "The death took just 12 minutes. Far shorter than that of Davonae Williams [her girlfriend's son] , who died over a series of weeks."
Coleman's calm execution is a far cry from the botched executions we have seen this year.
In July, Joseph Wood gasped and weezed for almost two hours before dying according to witnesses. This led to the Arizona Governor ordering the state's Department of Corrections to review the death and procedure.
In April, Clayton Lockett was said to have been breathing heavily and groaning after being issued a failed lethal injection. He died of a heart attack 43 minutes after the execution began.
And in January, Dennis McGuire reportedly made snorting and choking sounds for air for around 25 minutes before dying. A lawsuit was filed after the execution by McGuire's family.
Witnesses say Coleman expressed love for her family in her last words.
