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Christina
Marie Riggs. |
Christina Marie Riggs is unique among the women on
these pages in that she insisted on her execution, which took place on
She confessed to the killing of her two
children, Justin Thomas, 5, and Shelby Alexis, 2, in November 1997 and asked
the jury for the death sentence at the sentencing phase of her trial, telling
them "I want to die. I want to be with my babies. I want you to give me
the death penalty."
The crime.
After her arrest, Christina made a
detailed taped confession to the police explaining how she had killed her
children. She told them she had mixed an amount of the antidepressant drug
Elavil with water and made the children drink it. Elavil also has a sedative
effect and when the children became drowsy she injected Justin in the neck with
potassium chloride (one of the drugs used both in lethal injections and open
heart surgery to stop the heart beating). Sadly, she didn't realize that she
had to dilute the potassium chloride for it to work. Instead of killing Justin, as she intended,
it left him in agony and she gave him an injection of morphine to ease the
pain. Weeping, she rocked him in her arms, according to court statements. When
his pain had subsided she smothered him with a pillow and then did the same to
"I hope one day you will forgive me for
taking my life and the life of my children. But I can’t live like this any
more, and I couldn’t bear to leave my children behind to be a burden on you or
to be separated and raised apart from their fathers and live knowing their
mother killed herself."
She then swallowed 28 tablets of Elavil and injected herself with potassium
chloride.
Her mother, Carol Thomas, became concerned that she couldn't raise her daughter
and called the police. Officers David Smith and Steve Henker entered her
apartment and found the children's bodies and Christina on the floor in the
bedroom. She was semi-conscious and not responding.
She was taken to the
The Pulaski County Coroner Mark Malcolm estimated that the children had been
dead for 10-14 hours before they were discovered.
The trial.
Christina came to trial at the
Pulaski County Circuit Court in June.1998 and entered a plea of not guilty by
reason of mental disease or defect. Her defense did not dispute the fact that
she had killed her children.
Her defense attorneys claimed that she had a long history of depression and low
self esteem. She was relatively poor, a single mom and very overweight at 280
pounds.
It seems clear that when she killed her children that she intended to kill
herself too and one psychiatrist testified that she was a mentally ill woman
who suffered severe depression, which led her to believe that it was "an
act of love" to take her children with her.
She did not want the children separated after her death.
The specialists who testified in her defense said that her family had a long
history of depression and suicide. She was said to suffer from an hereditary
chemical imbalance that caused depression. Christina also claimed to have been
sexually abused as a child, which caused her to internalize her feelings.
It had also been claimed, prior to the trial, that she had become traumatized
by working as a nurse at the scene of the
The prosecution painted a rather different picture however. They claimed that
she killed the children because they were an inconvenience to her and that she
had planned the murders for several weeks in advance. They also claim that she
left them alone in the house or with her mother while she went out at night to
Karaoke bars.
The eight minute long taped confession was permitted to be entered as evidence
and played to the jury giving them a chilling account of how she planned and
carried out the killings.
On
They agreed and Circuit Judge Marion Humphrey sentenced her to death by lethal
injection. Christina said "thank you" and squeezed her attorney's
hand. The initial execution date was set for
She did allow a motion to be filed for a
retrial, however, claiming she did not get a fair trial because her police
confession (the main evidence against her) was admitted into evidence. Her
attorney, John Wesley Hall, Jr., told the court that Christina was still under
the influence of the Elavil when she gave her confession to police and that
Elavil can cause confusion. ''She did not know where she was or what day it was
and that she was hallucinating about the officers arriving on an escalator to
talk to her.'' It was also claimed that
the prosecuting attorney made prejudicial opening remarks to the jury and that
they did not take their oath seriously. These motions were rejected by Circuit
Judge John Langston.
The state Supreme Court overturned all appeals and accepted a motion from her
in July 1998 that she was competent to be executed.
On death row.
Christina was the only inmate to be
housed in the three cell female death row facility at the Correction
Department's McPherson Unit at
Apparently the prison food was good. "I've put on 30 pounds since I've
been here," she said.
She was given the standard off white prison scrubs and sneakers to wear and was
allowed to curl her hair and use a little makeup. She was able to watch
television and read several books a week which her mother sent in for her. She
was allowed to exercise in a small outdoor courtyard adjacent to her cell.
When interviewed, she said that it was hard trying to deal with what she did to
her children, pictures of whom decorated the mirror in her cell. She told the
interviewer that she was eager to die. "I'll be with my children and with
God. I'll be where there's no more pain. "Maybe I'll find some
peace."
Execution.
The Arkansas state governor Mike
Huckabee reviewed the case but declined to intervene and eventually the
execution was set for Tuesday May 3rd, to be carried out between the hours of 8
and 9 p.m. in the Cummins Unit, outside Pine Bluff. Christina was flown from
female death row in the McPherson Unit to the Cummins Unit three days prior to
the execution. The execution began 18 minutes late because of difficulty in
finding a suitable vein to put the catheters into. Christina agreed to have the
catheters placed in veins in her wrists.
Her last words, strapped to the gurney, were "There is no way no words can
express how sorry I am for taking the lives of my babies," she said.
"Now I can be with my babies, as I always intended." She also said
"I love you, my babies".
The execution went smoothly and she was certified dead nine minutes later.
Background.
She had had a difficult childhood.
She was born in Lawton, Oklahoma in 1971 and claimed to have been sexually
abused by her stepbrother between the age of 7 and 13. At 13, she was also
abused by a neighbor. By 14, she was drinking, smoking cigarettes and
marijuana. Her obesity was a major problem - she is quoted as saying "I
felt that no boy liked me because of my weight, so I became sexually
promiscuous because I thought that was the only way I could have a
boyfriend." The inevitable
pregnancy followed and in January 1988 she gave the resulting baby boy up for
adoption.
On graduating from high school, she became a
licensed nurse. She became pregnant again in October 1991 (with Justin)
although the father abandoned her immediately on learning the news. A little
later she went back with a former boyfriend, Jon Riggs, who eventually moved in
with her and married her in July 1993 by which time she was pregnant again -
sadly this pregnancy resulted in a miscarriage.
The marriage was not a success and Christina became depressed and suicidal,
being prescribed the anti-depressant drug Prozac.
In 1994, she became pregnant again and in December, Shelby Alexis was born.
They moved to Sherwood, Arkansas in 1995 to be near where her mother lived so
as to be able to get some help with child care. She and Jon soon divorced and
she was left to fend for herself with two small children. Her already poor
financial situation began to deteriorate. Her child support payments from the
children's fathers were irregular, she claimed, and the day care costs for her
children high. By this time, she was working at the
One can imagine that it would be easy to
have suicidal thoughts in this situation. It is hardly uncommon, although the
prosecution challenged her financial hardship. She was apparently earning
$17,000 a year working 12 hour shifts at the Heart Hospital and according to
them the children's fathers were making most of their maintenance payments.
Larry Jegley, the Pulaski Country prosecutor
who led the case against her, told reporters he didn’t buy her "excuses"
for murdering her children.
"Simply put, she’s a self-centered, selfish, premeditated killer who did
the unspeakable act of taking her own children’s lives." "She used
every excuse in the world." "I think the jury just saw her as the
manipulative, self-centered person she really and truly is. She claims she was
horribly depressed, she was overweight, she was a single mom, and she didn't
have enough money. My response to that is welcome to America. Plenty of folks
are in far worst situations than she was."
There would seem to be some truth in that too.
Comment.
The basic facts of Christina's case
are simple. She did kill her two
children and wanted to be put to death for so doing. These facts are not in
dispute.
Had she succeeded in killing herself, after the children as she intended, few
people would have ever heard of her and it would be just another of those
tragic cases where people kill their family and then themselves.
Unusually perhaps, Christina believed in capital punishment herself telling an
interviewer "I still believe in the death penalty even though I'm sitting
here on Death Row. In my case, I'm glad I have the option." She felt that
life without parole was a "waste of tax dollars" and cruel to the
inmate who can only leave prison "feet first".
Mianette Layne, a criminal justice and psychology student who corresponded with
Christina is quoted as saying of her "I think that she is comforted that
she will be punished for what she did," "Her days are guilt-ridden,
and she is not getting any help dealing with that guilt. She believes that she
will be with her children when she dies, and this is also comforting to
her."
Prosecutor Larry Jegley was not impressed by Christina's request to be allowed
to be executed, however, telling reporters "One of the things that was
clear to the jury was that she was extremely self-centered and manipulative.
Saying she wanted to die may have been one of the manipulative machinations
that she had grown comfortable with throughout her life."
A factor that may have affected Christina's
decision to drop her appeals was the treatment she received from other women
inmates while in prison awaiting trial. She was spat on and sworn at. She may
also have been aware of the treatment of Susan Smith in
Was
Did she deserve the death penalty? There is no doubt in law that if you kill
your children and then fail in a suicide attempt you can be guilty of murder.
Christina clearly felt this and refused to let her defense put some of the
obvious mitigating factors to the jury. A lot of people would consider that the
killing of two small children by the mother who they love and trust to be a
particularly heinous crime and one which deserves death. Perhaps she was
manipulative and selfish, I think we all can be at times. Raising two small
children in difficult financial circumstances may have just got to Christina
over time. She knew it was going to be a
long time before they grew up and she may not have been able to take the stress
of it any longer.
I don't feel personally that Christina was really an evil woman but rather a
sad and somewhat inadequate person who saw killing the children and herself as
the easy way out of the stresses of life. Equally, I think not executing her
would have been the ultimate cruelty.
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1900 - 2008