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Women criminals often spared death

Sentencing phase begins in trial of Morgan-Major

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BEAUFORT -- By pleading guilty in January to the 2004 murder of a brain-damaged and physically disabled man, Samantha Morgan-Major puts her life squarely in the hands of one man -- Circuit Court Judge Roger Young, who begins hearing testimony today in the sentencing phase of her trial.

Morgan-Major's case is rare because not only did she plead guilty in face of the death penalty, but if sentenced to death she'd be the first woman on South Carolina's death row since 1992. If executed, she'd be the first woman in the state put to death since 1947.

Morgan-Major, 24, admitted to teaming with co-defendant John Francis Dykeman Jr., 43, on May 2, 2004, in kidnapping Brett Kinney and stabbing him in the back with a hunting knife to make him give up his ATM card, according to prosecutors. They used the card over the next few days.

Kinney was stuffed in the trunk of a car and taken to Morgan-Major's Grays Hills home. Prosecutors said that for more than 24 hours, she and Dykeman tried various ways of killing Kinney, including stabbing him in the head; choking him with a strap; injecting air into a vein in his neck; trying to suffocate him in an empty freezer; placing him in a tomb in a graveyard and, finally, beating him to death with sticks, shovels and rocks.

After his family and police searched for him for about a week, his body was found near Joe Frazier Road in Burton.

Although women account for about 10 percent of murder arrests nationwide, only 2 percent are sentenced to death, according to a study by Victor L. Streib, law professor at Ohio Northern University considered an expert on women and the death penalty.

Though the odds are tough, 14th Circuit Court Solicitor Duffie Stone said he pursued the death penalty for Morgan-Major because of the torturous nature of the crime.

"This case is the most appropriate case for the death penalty I've been involved in," said Stone, who said this is his fifth death-penalty case, the second of which he's been on the prosecution. "Her sex didn't factor into it. It's all about the crime and the criminal."

Even though a murder might seem horrific, there's a gender bias in the death penalty nationality, Streib said. It starts with prosecutors not wanting to pursue cases with little payoff and a willingness to accept plea bargains from women to avoid death sentences.

"Prosecutors also try to act tough and mean on crime in order to impress the electorate, but being tough and mean to a woman is not the image they seek," Streib wrote in an e-mail. "On the school playground, boys who punch other boys are tough guys, but boys who hit girls are wimps."

In his research, Streib found that the bias trickles throughout the justice systems. Juries and judges are less likely to sentence women to death, appellate courts are more likely to reverse death sentences in women's cases, and governors are more likely to commute women's death sentences to life in prison.

The bias traces back to the 1600s and continues to today, he said. From 1900 through 2005, only 50 of the 8,339 people executed in America were women, according to Streib's study.

In South Carolina, only one woman has been sentenced to death since 1973. She was sentenced in 1990 and had the decision reversed in 1992, according to Streib's study.

Only two women have been executed in South Carolina since 1900. One was Sue Logue, who was executed by electric chair in 1943. She was convicted in the fatal shooting of a sheriff who approached Logue and her brother at their house to confront them about contract killings avenging the death of Logue's husband, who was shot as part of a family feud.

The last woman executed in South Carolina was Rosa Marie Stinette, who died in the electric chair in 1947 for the contract killing of her husband.

"In essence, our culture values women's lives more than men's lives," Streib said. "We allow women to be in the military but try to keep them out of combat situations; we put women on the lifeboats first when the ship is sinking."

To convince judges and juries to sentence anyone to death, prosecutors must dehumanize him or her. But Streib said to sentence a woman to death, she must be defeminized first.

"The more traditionally feminine she appears (is she a mother, etc.)," he said, "the harder this is to do."

A notorious South Carolina case in point: Susan Smith. A jury convicted her in 1995 of murdering her two sons by driving her car into a lake in Union while the two slept strapped into the back seat. Smith launched a nationwide search for more than a week before admitting her guilt.

However, despite national outrage over the crime, the jury sentenced her to life in prison though the prosecutor sought the death penalty.

"I'm not sure the results wouldn't have been different if she were a man," Stone said.

Streib said he worked on the Smith case, and a survey of the public at the time showed about 80 percent in support of the death penalty in general but only about 35 percent in support of death penalty for women. He said he thinks the attitude remains the same.

In June, Jennifer Annette Holloway and her male co-defendant were spared the death penalty by a judge after a jury couldn't decide unanimously on a sentence. They were found guilty of the 2004 murder of 71-year-old prominent Greenville businessman by suffocating him when they wrapped him up with duct tape and left him in a freezer in Tennessee.

The 13th Circuit Solicitor's Office declined to comment on the case, but it has been thought by jurors and the community that Holloway's gender played a role in the jury's split over the sentence.

Another South Carolina prosecutor, 8th Circuit Solicitor Jerry Peace, is going against the grain and preparing a death-penalty case against a woman. Rita Bixby, 73, is charged only with accessory before the fact of murder because she wasn't at her Abbeville County home in 2003 when two police officers were shot after a standoff with her son and husband.

Peace said he doesn't think her gender should make a difference in her case or any other death-penalty case.

"I would hope it did not," he said. "Practically, does it? Maybe."

Stone acknowledges that gender can play a strong role in death penalty cases.

"It's hard for juries to accept women are capable of such heinous crimes," he said. "Historically, as a state, we haven't seen women treated equally. This (bias in death-penalty cases) works to their advantage. Look at it this way -- we don't envision Satan as a woman."

Stone said that during Morgan-Major's sentencing he plans to prove "phase-three" aggravating circumstances: torture, murder during an armed robbery, and murder during a kidnapping.

If one or more of these circumstances are proven, the judge has a choice of sentencing Morgan-Major to life in prison without parole or death. If none are proven in the judge's eyes, he sentences her from 30 years to life in prison.

The defense will try to prove mitigating circumstances of the crime or reasons for leniency in sentencing. Morgan-Major's attorney, Sam Bauer, said he didn't want to discuss specifics before the sentencing.

"To me, the most important thing is Samantha entered a guilty plea and has thrown herself on the mercy of the court," Bauer said. "She admitted responsibility and should be shown some token consideration for having done that."

Marlene Kinney, Brett Kinney's sister, said she hopes the judge gives special consideration to her brother's handicaps and the brutality of the crime, though she said she only wants justice, which is not necessarily the death penalty.

"She imposed the death penalty on my brother in a cruel and inhumane way," Marlene Kinney said. "Nothing that can be done to her can compare to what was done to my brother."

Morgan-Major's sentencing trial is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. today at the Beaufort County Courthouse and is open to the public.

Contact Lori Yount at 986-5531 or .

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