The state has never executed a woman
The state has never executed a woman Washington residents are reluctant to have a woman executed. So far, no convicted female felons have been sentenced to die in the state. That could change if Barbara Opel is found guilty of aggravated murder in her contract murder trial, which began last month in Everett. Prosecutors have pushed for the death penalty, and it will be up to Opel's jury to decide whether execution is in line for the 39-year-old mother accused of soliciting six teens, including her own daughter, to bludgeon a man to death. Opel has two points in her favor: 1. She lives in the Northwest, with one of the country's lower capital punishment rates. 2. She's a woman. Juries have traditionally been less likely to sentence women to death. "It's because of juries' and judges' assumptions of what women are like," says Victor Streib, a law professor in Ohio who researches the topic. "In some of the older cases, judges from the bench wo...