Killing Women: A Critical Study of Gender Equality in the U.S. Criminal Justice System Regarding the Most Severe Form of Punishment

Sammanfattning: About 1 in 10 murders in the United States are committed by a woman. Meanwhile, only about 1 in 50 death row inmates are women. This initially suggests that women are favored in capital cases. There have been two predominant viewpoints attempting to explain the statistical imbalance: on the one hand there is Rapaport’s theory of gender-related crime in relation to existing legal directives on what warrants a capital sentence; and on the other hand is Streib’s theory of chivalry, that women are receiving lenient treatment in capital cases because they are women. This study has examined both theories, and tested their validity, by analyzing statistics and other material supporting or opposing their respective claims. The entire study has been carried out through a feminist theoretical perspective, questioning how “gender” plays an active part in capital cases, and relating committed crime to the victim, subsequently finding that even though Rapaport and Streib advance different theories, neither theory supports a claim that favoritism is incorrect.