The New York Times

Wednesday, May 3, 2000

Arkansas Executes a Woman Who Killed Both Her Children

By EMILY YELLIN

VARNER, Ark., May 2 -- The State of Arkansas put a woman to death tonight for the first time since the state began performing executions in 1913.

The woman, Christina Marie Riggs, 28, a former nurse, was put to death by lethal injection for killing her two children, Justin, 5, and Shelby Alexis, 2, in November 1997. Ms. Riggs admitted killing the children, and explained that she was deeply depressed at the time. She said she gave her son potassium chloride and morphine and when that did not kill him, she smothered him with a pillow. Then she smothered her daughter to death. She also tried to kill herself with potassium chloride.

Potassium chloride was one of the three drugs the state used in executing Ms. Riggs tonight.

The lethal injection was administered 9:18 p.m. Central Standard Time, and Ms. Riggs was pronounced dead at 9:28 p.m.

Before the injection was administered she made a statement that began, "No words can express just how sorry I am for taking the lives of my babies. No way I can make up for or take away the pain I have caused everyone who knew and loved them." After the injection was administered, her last words were, "I love you, my babies."

At her 1998 trial, Ms. Riggs asked jurors to sentence her to death, saying, "I want to be with my babies. I want you to give me the death penalty."

Prosecutors said Ms. Riggs's children had become an inconvenience. They said, for example, that she left them alone while she went to karaoke contests.

Initially, Ms. Riggs pursued appeal of her death sentence.

"We had to beg her to file an appeal of the conviction," said her lawyer, John Wesley Hall Jr. of Little Rock.

But she soon withdrew it. "She just wanted to get it over with," Mr. Hall said.

Ms. Riggs had the right to stop her execution at any time by resuming the appeals process, but she chose not to do so.

"I think it is virtually state-assisted suicide," Mr. Hall said. "This all started with a suicide attempt, and that's how it ended."

Ms. Riggs was the only woman on death row in Arkansas, and only the fifth woman to be executed in the United States since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.

Amnesty International and the American Civil Liberties Union had asked Gov. Mike Huckabee to intervene.

"Christina Riggs deserves compassion," said William F. Shultz, executive director of Amnesty International USA, "not the executioner's needle. Her stated desire to die should only sharpen, not absolve, the State of Arkansas's duty to show her that compassion."

Governor Huckabee, a Republican, could have granted Ms. Riggs a 30-day reprieve, but he could not grant clemency, his office said, because she had not asked for it.

In January, a county judge ruled that Ms. Riggs was mentally competent to make the decision to drop all her avenues of appeal. The State Supreme Court affirmed that ruling, and the governor set the date.

Ms. Riggs's mother, Carol Thomas, as the family of both the prisoner and the victims, had to choose between those roles and their accompanying privileges under state law.

Ms. Thomas could not both witness the execution and visit Ms. Riggs before the execution. She chose to visit her daughter.

A shaken Mr. Hall was with Ms. Riggs in her final moments and witnessed the execution. Afterward, he told reporters that she had told him tonight, "This is what I want."

And he said he told her, "I know."