Proof of Guilt: Barbara Graham and the Politics of Executing Women in America

10. The Ultimate Penalty

161 10 The Ultimate Penalty cynthia coffman was living in Barstow,California,when she met James Marlow. It was May 1986, and her boyfriend was doing time for drug possession.Marlow,just released from the same jail,stopped by Coffman’s apartment to inform her that the boyfriend had been moved to another facility. Within days, Coffman left Barstow with Marlow,“a Kentucky outlaw and speed addict who sported tattoos all over his body.” The pair embarked on a cross-country trek that came to involve methamphetamines, robbery, and the murder of a drug dealer. By fall, the pair had“drifted back to Southern California.”Shortly after their return, young women started to disappear: two in Orange County, one in San Bernardino County, and one in the Mojave Desert town of Bullhead City, Arizona. Police arrested Coffman and Marlow after discovering one victim’s checkbook in a bag that also contained the couple’s personal papers, and the car of another missing woman near the couple’s hideout. The defendants stood trial in both San Bernardino and Orange Counties. Coffman provided grisly details of the slayings, which included robbery, rape, sodomy, and strangulation. She admitted to helping strangle one victim with a towel, but insisted that she 162 THE ULTIMATE PENALTY had had no choice: Marlow beat and terrified her into helping him. Marlow claimed one of the murders had been Coffman’s idea. San Bernardino prosecutor Raymond Haight characterized the duo as “two flaky sociopaths separately. But you put them together and it was like Bonnie and Clyde all the way.” Marlow earned death sentences in both trials.Coffman earned one sentence of life in prison and, in 1989, a death sentence, making her the first condemned woman in California in the so-called modern era. The state supreme court has upheld death sentences for both Marlow and Coffman, but neither has been executed. Marlow is in his early fifties; Coffman is nearing fifty.¹ The experiences of Coffman and Marlow reflect California’s changed environment with regard to capital punishment since Barbara Graham’s time.Before court challenges slowed and then stopped executions in the 1960s and early 1970s, politicians touted the death penalty and then followed through by executing many,if not most,of the condemned inmates.Today’s prosecutors still seek death sentences and jurors oblige them, but very few people are actually executed. Thirteen men—fewer than 2 percent of those condemned—have been executed since California resumed executions in 1992. California currently has the largest death-row population in the country. San Quentin houses more than seven hundred condemned men on three separate death rows. As Coffman’s case illustrates, women also receive death sentences in California. As of February 2012, twenty condemned female inmates resided at the Central California Women’s Facility in the town of Chowchilla, but no woman has been executed in California since Elizabeth Duncan went to the gas chamber in 1962. And no woman is likely to be executed anytime soon.Condemned females rank far down the list of inmates awaiting the ultimate penalty. The timing of their trials and death sentences offers some explanation for their status. The average time from condemnation THE ULTIMATE PENALTY 163 to execution in California currently stands at about two decades. Only two condemned women, including Cynthia Coffman, have spent that much time on death row. The most recent female death sentence came in 2011. Some executed men spent much less than twenty years on death row. Three spent between fourteen and seventeen years there and one spent less than a decade.² The political and legal establishment in California may be reluctant to execute men, but it has utterly lost its nerve when it comes to the prospect of executing women. No matter that many among the current crop of female death-row inmates committed crimes far worse than the one that earned Barbara Graham a one-way ticket to the gas chamber. Three condemned women, including Coffman, committed sexual assaults and murders in concert with men.Janeen Snyder helped her partner kidnap, rape, and murder several female victims. Michelle Michaud helped her boyfriend kidnap, torture, and murder female victims inside a van specially equipped for the purpose. She committed some assaults herself and stood by as her partner raped her daughter. Michaud’s partner also earned a death sentence. Five killed their children. Susan Eubanks was divorced, broke, and...