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25 February 2000
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HR/00/14
24 February 2000
UN HUMAN RIGHTS EXPERTS APPEAL TO UNITED STATES
AUTHORITIES NOT TO EXECUTE WOMAN
Experts of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights have appealed to Texas Governor George W. Bush not to execute Betty Lou Beets, a woman sentenced to death in 1985 for the murder of her husband after a trial in which crucial mitigating evidence was allegedly never presented to the jury.
In an letter dated 24 February 2000, the Commission's Special Rapporteurs on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions and on violence against women, Asma Jahangir and Radhika Coomaraswamy, respectively, express their concern that abuse and extreme violence suffered by Betty Lou Beets were not considered by the investigating authorities or by the courts when convicting and sentencing her for murder. The letter follows a similar appeal the experts sent to United States Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright on 2 February.
The rapporteurs cite expert testimony which reportedly established that Betty Lou Beets suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, battered women's syndrome and organic brain damage, resulting from a long history of abuse at the hands of her spouses. According to the Special Rapporteurs, studies have shown that victims of domestic violence live within a violent cycle of abuse from which they are unable to escape either physically or mentally. Increasingly, they continue, courts around the world have accepted evidence of "battered women's syndrome" in mitigation of charges of murder. "In so doing, they have recognized the gender bias which is entrenched within criminal justice systems particularly in regard to the defense of provocation and self-defence, which are constructed around male norms of behaviour", the Special Rapporteurs said.
Ms. Jahangir and Ms. Coomaraswamy appeal to Governor Bush to consider the specific circumstances of the crime and in particular the violent abuse which Betty Lou Beets suffered at the hands of her spouses and the effect of this abuse on her state of mind and her actions. The Special Rapporteurs urge the Governor to exercise the prerogative of mercy in the case and to refrain from carrying out the execution in observance of the de facto moratorium on the execution of women in the United States since the death by lethal injection of Karla Faye Tucker in Texas on 3 February 1998. Indeed, Mrs. Beets would be the second woman to be executed in Texas since the beginning of the last century, after Karla Faye Tucker. Ms. Tucker's execution "brought worldwide condemnation of a state death penalty process incapable of showing mercy to a woman who had reformed her life and become a positive role model for other inmates", according to the Rapporteurs.
24 February 2000
UN HUMAN RIGHTS EXPERTS APPEAL TO UNITED STATES
AUTHORITIES NOT TO EXECUTE WOMAN
Experts of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights have appealed to Texas Governor George W. Bush not to execute Betty Lou Beets, a woman sentenced to death in 1985 for the murder of her husband after a trial in which crucial mitigating evidence was allegedly never presented to the jury.
In an letter dated 24 February 2000, the Commission's Special Rapporteurs on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions and on violence against women, Asma Jahangir and Radhika Coomaraswamy, respectively, express their concern that abuse and extreme violence suffered by Betty Lou Beets were not considered by the investigating authorities or by the courts when convicting and sentencing her for murder. The letter follows a similar appeal the experts sent to United States Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright on 2 February.
The rapporteurs cite expert testimony which reportedly established that Betty Lou Beets suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, battered women's syndrome and organic brain damage, resulting from a long history of abuse at the hands of her spouses. According to the Special Rapporteurs, studies have shown that victims of domestic violence live within a violent cycle of abuse from which they are unable to escape either physically or mentally. Increasingly, they continue, courts around the world have accepted evidence of "battered women's syndrome" in mitigation of charges of murder. "In so doing, they have recognized the gender bias which is entrenched within criminal justice systems particularly in regard to the defense of provocation and self-defence, which are constructed around male norms of behaviour", the Special Rapporteurs said.
Ms. Jahangir and Ms. Coomaraswamy appeal to Governor Bush to consider the specific circumstances of the crime and in particular the violent abuse which Betty Lou Beets suffered at the hands of her spouses and the effect of this abuse on her state of mind and her actions. The Special Rapporteurs urge the Governor to exercise the prerogative of mercy in the case and to refrain from carrying out the execution in observance of the de facto moratorium on the execution of women in the United States since the death by lethal injection of Karla Faye Tucker in Texas on 3 February 1998. Indeed, Mrs. Beets would be the second woman to be executed in Texas since the beginning of the last century, after Karla Faye Tucker. Ms. Tucker's execution "brought worldwide condemnation of a state death penalty process incapable of showing mercy to a woman who had reformed her life and become a positive role model for other inmates", according to the Rapporteurs.