(TW: Outdated/Offensive Language, Violence, Racial Discrimination, Death)
She was born in 1959, the second of eight children. Her mother was an alcoholic who drank during her pregnancies. Her father moved out after the birth of her last sibling. Her father described her mother as “very slow mentally, maybe even mentally retarded”. She never worked. The family lived in public housing, scraping by on public assistance.
As the eldest daughter, she cared for all of her siblings. She fed the family by doing odd jobs. She stole food when necessary, leading to a turn in a juvenile detention facility.
At 12, she was hit by a truck and knocked unconscious.
At 14, she was stabbed in the left temple.
At 15, she scored a 69 on an IQ test. The psychologist who analyzed her placed her “just within the upper limit of the classification of mental retardation.”
At 16, a psychological evaluation revealed serious mental disabilities and a “marked inability to cope with a variety of complex situations.” Despite recommendations, she never received a follow up neurological exam or protective control and training.
By 17, she had dropped out of high school.
By 22, she had shot and killed her girlfriend, Dedra Pettus, during an argument. She claimed it was an accident, and she served two years of her four-year sentence.
Seven years later, she moved in with her girlfriend Gloria Jean Leathers. They had met in prison, and Gloria had stabbed a woman to death. Their relationship was turbulent, and police said that often a week didn’t go by when they had to settle a domestic dispute. They got into a fight outside of a grocery store. An officer escorted Leathers to their house to collect belongings. Fifteen minutes later, she shot Leathers in front of The Village Police Department.
Her lawyer had agreed to represent her because he believed hers couldn’t possibly be a capital case. Upon learning that the prosecution was seeking the death penalty, he tried to withdraw, having never worked a capital case before. The court refused to allow him to withdraw, as well as refused the support of the public defender’s office.
In the courtroom, her sexual orientation was used against her. The prosecution implied that she was the “man” in the relationship, and therefore more aggressive and more likely to offend again.
Experts agree that usually, a case like this would be tried as a crime of passion—manslaughter. Many hold that if not for her sexual orientation, the prosecution could have never gotten away with a charge like first degree murder.
After hearing a trial permeated with homophobic and racist remarks, the jury sentenced her to death.
No evidence of her mental disabilities was presented during her trial. Her attorney wasn’t even made aware of them.
A psychologist conducted an evaluation of her in 1995 found that brain damage seriously impaired “her comprehension, her ability to logically express herself, [and] her ability to analyze cause and effect relationships.” He also said that she was “more chronically vulnerable than others to becoming disorganized by everyday stresses—and thus more vulnerable to a loss of control under stress.
In appeals for her life, she was forced to renounce her sexual identity as a born-again Christian. Because who would argue for the life of an “aggressive” lesbian?
On January 11, 2001, she faced execution. On the gurney, she uttered her last words, “Father, forgive them. They know not what they do”.
Not a year after her death, the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional to execute an individual with mental disabilities.
She is Wanda Jean Allen. She lost her life in the name of "justice".