Executed in Arkansas After Refusing to Contest Her Sentence
Case summary
In November 1997 Riggs killed her two children, five-year-old Justin and two-year-old Shelby, at their home in Sherwood, Arkansas, and attempted suicide by overdose. She confessed, refused to allow her lawyers to argue for her life at sentencing, and asked the jury to impose the death penalty. She was executed by lethal injection on May 3, 2000, becoming the first woman executed in Arkansas since 1845. Her case is a standing reference point in debates about whether severely depressed defendants who volunteer for execution are competent to do so, and about the near-total absence of maternal mental illness from American capital sentencing.
Mental-health context
Defence lawyers cited Riggs's depression and post-traumatic stress disorder at trial. A psychiatrist testified she was a mentally ill woman suffering severe depression which led her to believe that taking her children with her was 'an act of love.' Riggs, herself a nurse, presented no mitigation case at the penalty phase and asked the jury for a death sentence — a decision her supporters argued was itself a symptom of her illness.
Status / outcome
Convicted of capital murder (1998); executed by lethal injection May 3, 2000
Sources
- https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/christina-riggs-19535/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christina_Marie_Riggs
- http://clarkprosecutor.org/html/death/US/riggs629.htm
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