- Christina Marie Riggs
-
Christina Marie Riggs 
Born September 2, 1971 Died May 2, 2000 (aged 28)
Cummins Unit, Lincoln County, ARConviction(s) Two counts of first degree murder Penalty Death Status Executed Occupation Licensed practical nurse Children Justin Riggs (age 5 in 1997)
Shelby Alexis Riggs (age 2 in 1997)Christina Marie Riggs (September 2, 1971 – May 2, 2000) was a murderer executed in Arkansas by lethal injection. She was convicted of the November 4, 1997, murder of her two preschool-aged children, Justin and Shelby Alexis Riggs, in their beds at the family's Sherwood, Arkansas, home. Her plan to murder her children involved giving them undiluted potassium chloride just after giving them Elavil to sedate them.[1] However, the potassium chloride was not diluted properly and it burned her son's veins, causing Justin terrible pain but not death.[2] She eventually smothered him, when the injection was ineffective. She then smothered her daughter Shelby, without injecting her, after seeing the pain that the drug caused Justin.[1] She took the children, and laid them on her bed, covered them with a blanket, and wrote suicide notes.[3] She then attempted to commit suicide by taking twenty-eight Elavil pills, and injecting herself with undiluted potassium chloride. Nineteen hours later, Riggs' mother discovered her unconscious, but still alive, on the floor of her home.[2]
Christina was suffering from a very deep depression and apparently did not want to have her children split up after her own suicide. The children had different fathers.[4]
At her June 1998 trial, Riggs contended she was not guilty by reason of insanity, but the Pulaski County jury convicted her. During the penalty phase, Riggs would not allow attorneys to put on a defense, saying she wanted a death sentence. Coincidentally, she was executed with a potassium chloride injection, the same substance with which she attempted to kill her children.
Riggs was placed in the Arkansas Department of Correction system and held at the McPherson Unit, which included the female death row, until her execution.[5] The Arkansas execution chamber is located at the Cummins Unit.[6]
On Sunday April 30, 2000, Riggs was flown from McPherson to Cummins in preparation for her execution.[1] Riggs was the fifth woman executed in the United States since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976. She was also the first woman executed in Arkansas since 1845.[3] Her last words were: "There is no way no words can express how sorry I am for taking the lives of my babies. Now I can be with my babies, as I always intended."[7] She also said, "I love you, my babies."[7]
See also
- Capital punishment in the United States
- Capital punishment in Arkansas
- List of females executed in the United States
References
- ^ a b c Arkansas woman is facing execution for killing children, Associated Press, Varner, AR: The Free Lance-Star, May 22, http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=QgUzAAAAIBAJ&sjid=zQgGAAAAIBAJ&dq=christina%20marie%20riggs&pg=4836%2C155888, retrieved November 5, 2010
- ^ a b "Christina Marie Riggs" Office of the Clark County Prosecuting Attorney
- ^ a b Lance, Morrow (May 3, 2000), Why I changed my mind on the death penalty, Time: Time.com, http://edition.cnn.com/2000/US/05/03/morrow5_3.a.tm/, retrieved November 5, 2010
- ^ Haddigan (April 9, 1999), They Kill Women, Don't They?, Arkansas Times, http://www.clarkprosecutor.org/html/death/US/riggs629.htm, retrieved November 5, 2010:Fathers were Timothy Thompson, who was stationed at Tinker Air Force Base, and Carol Thomas of Jacksonville, AR.
- ^ Haddigan, Michael. "They Kill Women, Don't They?" Arkansas Times. April 9, 1999. Retrieved on August 15, 2010.
- ^ "State Capitol Week in Review." State of Arkansas. June 13, 2008. Retrieved on August 15, 2010. "Executions are carried out in the Cummins Unit, which is adjacent to Varner."
- ^ a b Christina Marie Riggs, Capital Punishment U.K., retrieved November 5, 2010
Categories:- 1971 births
- 2000 deaths
- American people convicted of murder
- People executed for murder
- Filicides
- People executed by lethal injection
- 20th-century executions by the United States
- American female murderers
- People executed by Arkansas
- American murderers of children
- Executed American women
- People convicted of murder by Arkansas
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