The Women's Executions Project

The Women's

Executions Project

Resources and a working dataset encompassing state-sanctioned executions of all women occurring in the United States (or territories that would become the U.S.) from the 1600s to the present day

Presented here is the first and only platform dedicated to documenting all known executions of women through provision of WEB, the Women's Execution dataBase. The number of women executed in the U.S. since the 1600s exceeds 700; a far larger number than represented in statistical reports.

This website is an attempt to correct for the omission and misrepresentation of women. The goal is to produce a digitized dataset that better represents women's lived experiences by including variables like parental status, resistance to slavery, etc. In so doing, the leading role of M. Watt Espy in capital punishment research, as well as the importance of scholarship that focuses on identity and the criminal justice system, is brought center stage.

437 of the executed 700 women have been identified as black and 227 as white

The number of women missing from most quantitative accounts of executed women.

195 (about 63%) of the 310 women missing from the most commonly cited dataset to this day.

The release of WEB is important for a number of reasons

1) To assist researchers and dedicated professionals who are working on behalf of women and revealing gendered and racial injustices. The United States judicial system is predicated upon credible, reliable, evidence. At the very least, judges, lawyers, and advocacy groups should be aware of significant flaws in the quantitative data used by the media and in the courtroom. There is no one reliable data source of women's executions that spans all of American history and encompasses women's experiences with the criminal justice system. The importance of such data are evidenced in the Brenda Andrew case.

2) To account for black women's invisibility in death penalty data. See, for example, preliminary findings on Race and Executions. Organizations like the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) caution users of using outdated data but are reliant on researchers to provide accurate historical data. This site hopes to assist in efforts of organizations like the DPIC by being a resource for those needing evidence of the role of identity in capital punishment.

3) That even if the data are not utilized, that this website might offer other avenues and resources for research. This project began with the aforementioned goal but was forced to accept the fact that all historical quantitative data analyses based on the Espy file are problematic. If one is to address "gender" and the death penalty, then scholarship requires awareness of men's misrepresentation in the file.

4) Finally, to promote existing and emerging scholarship that have sought to quantify experiences that are especially relevant to women (e.g., backgrounds of sexual and domestic violence, parental status, mental and health difficulties related to abuse, the relationships [i.e., accomplices] that contributed to the crime). Moreover, the aim is to provide a comprehensive hub for the sharing of scholarship and research.

5) My work examines those processes in academia that serve to reinforce patriarchal and racial hierarchies in knowledge production by incorporating the critical insights of Queer, Black Feminist, and Biopolitical (necropolitical) approaches. The earlier decisions made by those responsible for inputting the data are of historical interest, but it is time to not only question their continued usage despite known issues and prevalence in academic scholarship, but to address, once again, how we are asking how far women have really come? Like the cigarette industry, capital punishment is dominated by men and is part of a gendered narrative that kills, but not indiscriminately, and somehow manages to fetishize women--even in the most grim of circumstances.

This project would be impossible without the diligent work of university archivists and staff at the University of Albany's M. E. Grenander Special Collections and Archives. Therefore, much of the individual datapoints cite the library's M. Watt Espy collection. And I have now actually visited the space (see The M.E. Grenander Archives Visit! ).

This site is, and will remain, a work in progress. Any omission of gratitude to any one person or organization that have made this possible is entirely accidental or simply have not made it to the website. The website's primary aim is updating data and therefore any failings of attribution are entirely unintentional. However, if you see such an oversight, please email me directly (Dr. Corina Schulze at cschulze@southalabama.edu). Substantive additions and suggestions for improvement are especially welcome.

citation preference(s)

This project was registered with Open Science Framework (OSF) on June 25, 2024. https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/KTMXS.

If you are citing the project in general, (versus the dataset), please use the following:

- Schulze, C. (2025, May 29). The women’s executions project. https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/SB36X
- or Schulze, C. (n.d.) Executions of Women. The Women’s Execution Project, University of South Alabama, https://womensexecutionsproject.org

A special thanks to Sexes, whose open access approach to publication allowed me to "officially" introduce the website. (https://doi.org/10.3390/sexes6020027)

An equally important impetus of this project is to honor the years of research of Alabama's very own M. Watt Espy, who is recognized as "America's foremost historian of executions" (Equal Justice Initiative). Running parallel to the construction of WEB is an ongoing project which addresses the privileging of knowledge in academia and the publish or perish attitudes that serve to minimize the work of non-traditional researchers or those whose approach may present uncomfortable narratives. This project does challenge the misplaced reverence for the "Espy File," explained in more detail on the Project Resources page. It is the papers of M. Watt Espy housed at the M.E. Grenander Department of Special Collections & Archives that served as one of the primary sources for data verification.

Importantly, the department completed verification and coding for five states back in 2020. For those looking for accurate Espy File data for both men and women for Alaska, Alabama, Hawaii, Oregon, and Wyoming, please refer to their website!

Website created by Dr. Corina Schulze, email at: cschulze@womensexecutionsproject.org