Summary:

Riggs, a licensed nurse, was convicted of murder by smothering her two preschool-aged children in their beds at the family's Sherwood home.

On November 4, 1997, Riggs obtained the anti-depressant Elavil from her pharmacist, the painkiller morphine and the toxic potassium chloride from the hospital where she worked.

The heart-stopping potassium chloride is the same drug used in the lethal cocktail injected into condemned inmates in the death house.

Riggs gave the children a small amount of Elavil to put them to sleep. Then she placed each of the children in their beds.

About 10 p.m., she injected 5 year old Justin with undiluted potassium chloride. But unless it is diluted, the drug causes burning and pain. Justin woke and cried out in terror. She then smothered the boy with a pillow.

Moving to her 2 year old Shelby, Riggs passed on the potassium chloride injection because of the pain it had caused Justin. She suffocated her daughter with a pillow.

Riggs then placed the children side-by-side on her bed and covered them with a blanket. She wrote suicide notes, took 28 Elavil tablets, normally a lethal dose, and injected herself with enough undiluted potassium chloride to kill five people. The Elavil took effect, and she fell unconscious to the floor.

The next day, she was discovered by her mother and rushed to the hospital.

At her June 1998 trial, Riggs contended she was not guilty by reason of insanity, blaming chronic, acute depression, 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. The jury obliged.

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 in more than 150 years.

They Kill Women, Don't They?

By Michael Haddigan - Arkansas Times Online

April 9, 1999

Arkansas moves toward its first execution of a woman.

NEWPORT — An eternity ago, Christina Riggs spent her days shuttling her two pre-school children to day care, working as a licensed practical nurse and managing a calamitous love life.

Now her days are filled with monotony, silence, solitude and soul-crushing guilt. Riggs was convicted last year of smothering her two preschool-aged children in their beds at the family's Sherwood home.

She is the only inmate on the state's newly inaugurated Death Row for women at the Correction Department's McPherson Unit at Newport. She could become the first woman executed in Arkansas in modern times.

But there's another distinction that sets Riggs apart from the rest of Arkansas's condemned inmates. While many claw desperately for life through legal appeals and appeals of appeals, Riggs is what in the death penalty business they call "a volunteer."

She says she has appealed her death sentence only reluctantly. And, the condemned woman says, she's eager to die. "I'll be with my children and with God. I'll be where there's no more pain," Riggs said in a recent interview at the Newport prison. "Maybe I'll find some peace."

Riggs is one of 48 condemned women in American prisons. Death sentences for women are rare, and actual executions are even more infrequent. The state of Arkansas has never executed a woman.

But, according to Watt Espy, an independent Alabama death penalty researcher, at least three women were executed in Arkansas before the Civil War. Executions were the responsibility of the counties until 1913 when the state took them over. Since then, the names of only three other women have appeared on the death list. All eventually had their sentences reduced.

Riggs meets with her infrequent visitors in a visitation hall not far from the cell where she has been quartered in solitude since her conviction. Handcuffed as she always is when outside her cell, Riggs talks with visitors through a thick clear plastic window and over the hum of the visitation hall's soft-drink machines.

A guard stands just out of earshot. Prison food, she said, is good. Too good, really. Time on the death list has aggravated a lifelong struggle with her weight, she said. "I've put on 30 pounds since I've been here," Riggs said smiling.

Dressed in off-white prison scrubs and sneakers, Riggs wears a little makeup and has taken pains to curl her hair — using rolled-up tube socks as curlers. "You'd be surprised at what you learn in prison," she said. Riggs learned the sock-curling technique in the Pulaski County Jail and later taught it to Whitewater defendant Susan McDougal while they were both being held there.

On Death Row, Riggs said, she's trying hard to deal with what she did to her children, Justin, 2, and Shelby, 5. Pictures of the children decorate a mirror in her cell. At times, she speaks of them almost as if they were still alive. "Sometimes I can't think about them," Riggs said as tears rolled down her cheeks. "It's like they're being ripped away from me all over again."

During her trial, Riggs blamed chronic, acute depression for the state of mind that led her to drug and suffocate her children and then to unsuccessfully attempt suicide. But Pulaski County Prosecuting Attorney Larry Jegley said the jury saw a much different Christina Riggs. "Essentially, what the jury saw was that she was self-centered, that she viewed the children as an inconvenience and an interference with what she wanted to pursue," Jegley said. "She placed her interests above those of the children."

Alone in the isolation of her cell, the condemned woman said, Death Row is a state of mind. She continues to be haunted by the memory of her children. "A lot of regret. That's what goes through my mind, day-in, day-out," Riggs said. "God's punishing me. He let me live so I would suffer."

By her own account, the torment of the last few years came after a lifetime of sexual abuse, depression and failed relationships. A native of Lawton, Okla., Riggs lived most of her life in Oklahoma City.

According to a journal Riggs recently began in prison, her stepbrother sexually abused from about age 7 to 13. At 13, she was also abused by a neighbor, she said. Within a year, she began drinking, smoking cigarettes and marijuana. "I felt that no boy liked me because of my weight, so I became sexually promiscuous because I thought that was the only way I could have a boyfriend," she wrote.

By age 16, Riggs was pregnant, and in January 1988 she gave the baby boy up for adoption. After high school, she became a licensed practical nurse and worked part-time as a home care nurse and full-time at a Veterans Administration hospital. After dating several men, including a sailor and a bar bouncer, Riggs began a relationship with Timothy Thompson, who was stationed at Tinker Air Force Base.

In late October 1991, she learned she was pregnant again. She told Thompson about the baby the day before his discharge from the service. According to the condemned woman's mother, Carol Thomas of Jacksonville, Thompson at first wouldn't accept the baby as his own.

He moved back to his native Minnesota. "Chrissy's luck with men was about zero to nothing," Thomas said. Meanwhile, the pregnant woman rekindled her relationship with the sailor, Jon Riggs, while he was home on leave. "It was great," she wrote in her prison journal. "He felt the baby's first kick. As far as he was concerned, it was his baby."

The baby, Justin, was born on June 7, 1992. His little sister would later call him Bubbie. The nickname stuck. "As I held Justin in my arms and looked into his little face, I became so scared. Would I be a good Mom? Could I give him all he needed?" Riggs wrote.

Jon Riggs eventually moved in with her, but their relationship was troubled from the start, the condemned woman wrote. She became pregnant again, and the couple married in July 1993. But bitter disappointment visited again. Christina Riggs had a miscarriage on her wedding night.

The marriage teetered on the verge of divorce, Riggs wrote, and she became depressed and suicidal, partly, she says, as a result of prescribed birth control medication. A doctor prescribed the anti-depressant Prozac. But when she began to feel better, she stopped taking the drug.

Carol Thomas said her daughter confided in her about the depression, but minimized its effect. "She's always been that way. If I pushed her hard she might get mad and tell me what was going on," Thomas said. But generally Riggs kept her feelings to herself, her mother said.

In the spring of 1994, Riggs became pregnant again, and in December, Shelby Alexis Riggs was born. Her family called the child Sissie. "We were so happy. she was so beautiful. I didn't think things could get any better. (Jon) cried. I cried. He was full of so much love for her. The way he looked at her," Riggs wrote in the journal.

When a terrorist bomb ripped apart Oklahoma City's Murray Federal Building in April 1995, Riggs said the hospital assigned her to work at a triage station a short distance from the blast site.

Defense attorneys indicated during her trial that she suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result. But prosecutors contended the hospital had no record that she worked in the blast zone.

In the summer of 1995, the couple decided to move to Sherwood where her mother was then living. The couple hoped the grandmother could help with day care. Riggs got a job at Baptist Hospital where her mother is employed as as a food service worker.

Both children had health problems. Shelby had a series of serious ear infections, and Justin's attention deficit disorder and hyperactivity made him more than a handful, Thomas said.

Eventually, the Riggs' marriage crumbled. Christina divorced Jon Riggs and moved back to Oklahoma City after the father punched Justin in the stomach so hard that the boy required medical attention, according to court documents. Justin was crushed. "Justin would say, 'My Daddy hurt me, and then he went away,' " Thomas recalled. From then on, Riggs' difficult financial circumstances got worse.

Child support payments from Riggs came irregularly, court documents say. And while Riggs worked long hours at a new job at the Arkansas Heart Hospital and at a temporary nursing agency, her child care bills mounted. "The more you work, the more you need day care," she recalled during the prison interview. "Then you feel bad about having them in day care."

Riggs remembered dropping off her daughter Shelby at day care for the first time. The child cried as her mother walked to the car. "She was beating on the glass, yelling, 'Mama! Mama!' " Riggs recalled.

Riggs wrote hot checks. Her car registration and insurance expired. She realized she was going under, Riggs said. "I started out in a boat with a small hole. But the hole kept getting bigger, and no matter how hard you bail, you keep sinking," she said. "I was tired and I gave up. Suicide seemed like the only thing." Carol Thomas said she sensed something was wrong and asked her daughter what was wrong. "She'd just say she was tired and working too many hours," Thomas remembered.

Because Riggs' appeal is still pending, the condemned woman's lawyer, John Wesley Hall of Little Rock, allowed an interview only on the condition that she not be asked about her crime. But court papers and trial testimony offer a chilling account of the killings.

On November 4, 1997, Riggs gathered drugs she would need. She obtained the anti-depressant Elavil from her pharmacist, the painkiller morphine and the toxic potassium chloride from the hospital where she worked.

The heart-stopping potassium chloride is the same drug used in the lethal cocktail injected into condemned inmates in the death house. Riggs gave the children a small amount of Elavil to put them to sleep. Then she placed each of the children in their beds.

About 10 p.m., she injected Justin with undiluted potassium chloride. But unless it is diluted, the drug causes burning and pain. Justin woke and cried out in terror. Crying herself now, she injected her son with morphine. It had no effect, and he continued to wail. She then smothered the boy with a pillow.

Next, she moved to Shelby's bed. Riggs decided to forego the potassium chloride injection because of the pain it had caused Justin. She suffocated her daughter with a pillow. Riggs then placed the children side-by-side on her bed and covered them with a blanket.

She wrote suicide notes to her mother and her ex-husband Jon Riggs. She took 28 Elavil tablets, normally a lethal dose, and injected herself with enough undiluted potassium chloride to kill five people. The Elavil took effect, and she fell unconscious to the floor. It was all over by about 10:30 p.m.

The undiluted potassium chloride burned a hole in her arm as big as a silver dollar as she lay in a stupor. After Riggs failed to show up for work the next day, Thomas telephoned her daughter's home but got no response. So she drove to her daughter's apartment and let herself in.

She found the children dead, and thought Christina Riggs was dead too. "All I could do was turn around and around and scream and holler, 'No. No. No.' " Thomas said. "There's no way to describe how I felt." Thomas punched 911 into her cell phone. "My daughter and her babies are dead!" she cried.

Paramedics and police found Riggs barely alive and took her to the Baptist Memorial Medical Center emergency room in North Little Rock. Doctors stabilized Riggs, and later moved her to intensive care where police, who had found the syringes and the suicide notes, kept her under guard.

At her June 1998 trial, Riggs contended she was not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect, but the Pulaski County jury convicted her. During the penalty phase, Riggs would not allow Hall to put on a defense, saying she wanted a death sentence.

The jury obliged. Prosecutor Jegley said he doesn't buy Riggs' prayer for death. "One of the things that was clear to the jury was that she was extremely self-centered and manipulative. Saying she wanted to die may have been one of the manipulative machinations that she had grown comfortable with throughout her life," Jegley said.

Attorney John Wesley Hall said the Supreme Court will likely hear her appeal by the summer. He contends that Circuit Judge Marion Humphrey erred when he failed to throw out the statement Riggs made to police from her hospital bed after the failed suicide try.

Hall said Riggs was still "literally hallucinating" from the drug overdose at the time. Hall also contends the court allowed prosecutors to prejudice the jury by showing them four photographs of the dead children. Riggs is still bitter about the photographs, but she seems to bear no malice for the legal system that sentenced her to death.

But if the death penalty was an expression of the jurors' revulsion, they weren't the only ones outraged. Riggs said her early days in the county jail were the toughest. Some women inmates were incensed that Riggs killed her children while they endured a forced separation from their own. "One woman spit at me and cussed me," she said. Now, in the McPherson Unit, she is almost totally isolated from other inmates.

As the appeal of her death sentence slowly winds its way through the legal system, Riggs spends much of her time reading or watching television through the glass of her cell door. "I didn't read a whole lot before I came to jail. I hated reading," Riggs said. "Now I read three or four novels a week. My mom sends them."

Riggs walks circles during exercise periods in the small outdoor courtyard adjoining her cell. She corresponds with prisoners in other states who she said are giving her "an education" about how to be a Death Row inmate.

Riggs also hears regularly from death penalty opponents from as far away as England and Austria. But she doesn't have much in common with them. "I still believe in the death penalty even though I'm sitting here on Death Row," Riggs said. "In my case, I'm glad I have the option." She said lifelong incarceration is a "waste of tax dollars" and torture for the inmate who can only leave prison "feet first" anyway.

Thomas said she hopes her daughter will change her mind, but she supports her decision. "She tells me she is adamant. she does not want to do life," Thomas said. "I want her to do whatever she needs for her. I know how hard it is for her to be in solitary up there by herself."

Riggs said she often wishes she was doing only a ten-year stretch and that her children were still alive. "I'd give anything to have 10 years if I just knew my kids were on the other side of the fence waiting for me," she said. Riggs says she doesn't know what she would do with a lifetime behind bars. If she could get therapy in prison, maybe she'd feel differently, she said. "My kids were all I had." Riggs says she believes her children are in heaven and that she will join them there when she dies. "I know it sounds crazy," she said. "But the torture I have put myself through every day is worse than anything you can imagine."

ProDeathPenalty.com

Gov. Mike Huckabee on Thursday set May 2 for the execution of Christina Marie Riggs, who was sentenced to die by lethal injection for killing her 2 children.

Riggs was convicted in Pulaski County Circuit Court for the Nov. 5, 1997, deaths of Justin, 5, who was injected with potassium chloride and morphine, then smothered, and Shelby Alexis, 2, who was smothered.

Prosecutors said Riggs, who was living at Sherwood at the time, decided that the children had become an inconvenience to her.

They said she left the children by themselves while she competed in karaoke contests and plotted their deaths for 2 or 3 weeks.

Last week, the state Supreme Court affirmed a Pulaski County Circuit Court ruling that granted Riggs' request to stop her appeals and found that she was competent to do so.

Prison officials say records going back to 1913 indicate that no woman has been executed by the state. Riggs is the only woman on Arkansas' death row.

Huckabee said that deciding Riggs' date was uncomfortable because of her sex and because her victims were children. "With all candor, I find myself very much aware that this would be a first in Arkansas," he said. "I'm not particularly comfortable or necessarily happy with that. On the other hand, I recognize the crime and the process that we have to go through, and I'll weigh all of those things, but I'm going to try my best to be as objective as I can be in all of this."

Christina Marie Riggs

Capital Punishment USA

Christina Marie Riggs is unique among the women on these pages in that she insisted on her execution, which took place on the 3rd of May 2000.

She was the first woman to be executed in Arkansas, since the state took over responsibility for executions in 1913 and only the fifth nation-wide since 1977.

She confessed to the killing of her two children, Justin Thomas aged 5 and Shelby Alexis, 2 in November 1997 and asked the jury for the death sentence at the sentencing phase of her trial, telling them "I want to die. I want to be with my babies. I want you to give me the death penalty."

The crime

After her arrest, Christina made a detailed taped confession to the police explaining how she had killed her children. She told them she had mixed an amount of the antidepressant drug Elavil with water and made the children drink it.

Elavil also has a sedative effect and when the children became drowsy she injected Justin in the neck with potassium chloride (one of the drugs used both in lethal injections and open heart surgery to stop the heart beating). Sadly she didn't realize that she had to dilute the potassium chloride for it to work - instead of killing Justin, as she intended, it left him in agony and she gave him an injection of morphine to ease the pain. Weeping, she rocked him in her arms, according to court statements.

When his pain had subsided she smothered him with a pillow and then did the same to Shelby, leaving their bodies side-by-side on a bed, covered with a blanket. She then wrote a suicide note to her estranged husband and left it on the bedside cabinet.

"I hope one day you will forgive me for taking my life and the life of my children. But I can’t live like this any more, and I couldn’t bear to leave my children behind to be a burden on you or to be separated and raised apart from their fathers and live knowing their mother killed herself."

She then swallowed 28 tablets of Elavil and injected herself with potassium chloride. Her mother, Carol Thomas, became concerned that she couldn't raise her daughter and called the police. Officers David Smith and Steve Henker entered her apartment and found the children's bodies and Christina on the floor in the bedroom.

She was semi-conscious and not responding. She was taken to the Baptist Memorial Medical Center in North Little Rock for treatment and arrested by Sherwood police immediately after her release the following day. The Pulaski County Coroner Mark Malcolm estimated that the children had been dead for 10 - 14 hours before they were discovered.

The trial

Christina came to trial at the Pulaski County Circuit Court in June 1998 and entered a plea of not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect. Her defense did not dispute the fact that she had killed her children. Her defense attorneys claimed that she had a long history of depression and low self esteem.

She was relatively poor, a single mom and very overweight at 280 pounds. It seems clear that when she killed her children that she intended to kill herself too and one psychiatrist testified that she was a mentally ill woman who suffered severe depression, which led her to believe that it was "an act of love" to take her children with her.

She did not want the children separated after her death. The specialists who testified in her defense said that her family had a long history of depression and suicide.

She was said to suffer from an hereditary chemical imbalance that caused depression. Christina also claimed to have been sexually abused as a child, which caused her to internalize her feelings. It had also been claimed, prior to the trial, that she had become traumatized by working as a nurse at the scene of the Oklahoma City bombing.

This was later disputed and was not used in evidence by the defense. She did work as a nurse in Oklahoma City but there was no record of her actually being at the scene of the bombing or treating its victims.

The prosecution painted a rather different picture, however. They claimed that she killed the children because they were an inconvenience to her and that she had planed the murders for several weeks in advance.

They also claim that she left them alone in the house or with her mother while she went out at night to Karaoke bars. The eight minute long taped confession was permitted to be entered as evidence and played to the jury giving them a chilling account of how she planned and carried out the killings.

On June 30th 1998, the jury of 7 women and 5 men took just 55 minutes to find her guilty of two counts of first degree murder. Christina collapsed in the court on receiving the verdict.

The trial now moved into the sentencing phase and Christina told the jurors "I want to die. I want to be with my babies. I want you to give me the death penalty." They agreed and Circuit Judge Marion Humphrey sentenced her to death by lethal injection. Christina said "thank you" and squeezed her attorney's hand. The initial execution date was set for August 15th 1998.

She did allow a motion to be filed for a retrial, however, claiming she did not get a fair trial because her police confession (the main evidence against her) was admitted into evidence.

Her attorney, John Wesley Hall Jr., told the court that Christina was still under the influence of the Elavil when she gave her confession to police and that Elavil can cause confusion. ''She did not know where she was or what day it was and that she was hallucinating about the officers arriving on an escalator to talk to her,''

It was also claimed that the prosecuting attorney made prejudicial opening remarks to the jury and that they did not take their oath seriously. These motions were rejected by Circuit Judge John Langston. The state Supreme Court overturned all appeals and accepted a motion from her in July 1998 that she was competent to be executed.

On death row

Christina was the only inmate to be housed in the three cell female death row facility at the Correction Department's McPherson Unit at Newport after her sentence. By all accounts she was well cared for. She was allowed to meet with her occasional visitors in a visitation hall not far from her cell.

She was handcuffed whenever she was outside her cell and talked to her visitors through a clear plastic window. Prison food was good. "I've put on 30 pounds since I've been here," she said. She was given the standard off-white prison scrubs and sneakers to wear and was allowed to curl her hair and use a little makeup. She was able to watch television and read several books a week which her mother sent in for her.

She was allowed to exercise in a small outdoor courtyard adjacent to her cell. When interviewed, she said that it was hard trying to deal with what she did to her children, pictures of whom decorated the mirror in her cell. She told the interviewer that she was eager to die. "I'll be with my children and with God. I'll be where there's no more pain. "Maybe I'll find some peace."

Execution

The Arkansas state governor Mike Huckabee reviewed the case but declined to intervene and eventually the execution was set for Tuesday 3rd May, to be carried out between the hours of 8 and 9 p.m. in the Cummins Unit, outside Pine Bluff.

Christina was flown from female death row in the McPherson Unit to the Cummins Unit three days prior to execution.

The execution began 18 minutes late because of difficulty in finding a suitable vein to put the catheters into. Christina agreed to have the catheters placed in veins in her wrists.

Her last words, strapped to the gurney, were "There is no way no words can express how sorry I am for taking the lives of my babies," she said. "Now I can be with my babies, as I always intended." She also said "I love you, my babies". The execution went smoothly and she was certified dead nine minutes later.

Background

She had had a difficult childhood. She was born in Lawton, Oklahoma in 1971 and claimed to have been sexually abused by her stepbrother between the age of 7 and 13. At 13 she was also abused by a neighbor. By 14 she was drinking, smoking cigarettes and marijuana. Her obesity was a major problem - she is quoted as saying "I felt that no boy liked me because of my weight, so I became sexually promiscuous because I thought that was the only way I could have a boyfriend," The inevitable pregnancy followed and in January 1988 she gave the resulting baby boy up for adoption.

On graduating from high school she became a licensed practical nurse. She became pregnant again in October 1991 (with Justin) although the father abandoned her immediately on learning the news.

A little later she went back with a former boyfriend, Jon Riggs, who eventually moved in with her and married her in July 1993 by which time she was pregnant again - sadly this pregnancy resulted in a miscarriage. The marriage was not a success and Christina became depressed and suicidal, being prescribed the anti-depressant drug Prozac.

In 1994, she became pregnant again, and in December, Shelby Alexis was born. They moved to Sherwood, Arkansas in 1995 to be near where her mother lived so as to be able to get some help with child care. She and Jon soon divorced and she was left to fend for herself with two small children. Her already poor financial situation began to deteriorate.

Her child support payments from the children's fathers were irregular, she claimed, and the day care costs for her children high. By this time she was working at the Arkansas Heart Hospital (from where she stole the potassium chloride, the morphine and the syringes and needles).

Other bills came in such as her car registration and insurance. She found herself in an increasingly desperate financial situation. Suicide she told one interviewer "seemed like the only thing."

One can imagine that it would be easy to have suicidal thoughts in this situation - it is hardly uncommon, although the prosecution challenged her financial hardship. She was apparently earning $17,000 a year working 12 hour shifts at the Heart Hospital and according to them the children's fathers were making most of their maintenance payments.

Larry Jegley, the Pulaski Country prosecutor who led the case against her, told reporters he didn’t buy her "excuses" for murdering her children. "Simply put, she’s a self-centered, selfish, premeditated killer who did the unspeakable act of taking her own children’s lives." "She used every excuse in the world." "I think the jury just saw her as the manipulative, self-centered person she really and truly is.

She claims she was horribly depressed, she was overweight, she was a single mom, and she didn't have enough money. My response to that is welcome to America. Plenty of folks are in far worst situations than she was." There would seem to be some truth in that too.

Comment

The basic facts of Christina's case are simple - she did kill her two children and wanted to be put to death for so doing. These facts are not in dispute. Had she succeeded in killing herself, after the children, as she intended few people would have ever of heard of her and it would be just another of those sad cases where people kill their family and then themselves.

Unusually, perhaps, Christina believed in capital punishment herself, telling an interviewer "I still believe in the death penalty even though I'm sitting here on Death Row. In my case, I'm glad I have the option." She felt that life without parole was a "waste of tax dollars" and cruel to the inmate who can only leave prison "feet first".

Mianette Layne, a criminal justice and psychology student who corresponded with Christina is quoted as saying of her "I think that she is comforted that she will be punished for what she did," "Her days are guilt-ridden, and she is not getting any help dealing with that guilt. She believes that she will be with her children when she dies, and this is also comforting to her."

Prosecutor Larry Jegley was not impressed by Christina's request to be allowed to be executed, however, telling reporters "One of the things that was clear to the jury was that she was extremely self-centered and manipulative.

Christina clearly felt this and refused to let her defense put some of the obvious mitigating factors to the jury. A lot of people would consider that the killing of two small children by the mother who they love and trust to be a particularly heinous crime and one which deserves death. Perhaps she was manipulative and selfish, I think we all can be at times.

Raising two small children in difficult financial circumstances may have just got to Christina over time, she knew it was going to be a long time before they grew up and she may not have been able to take the stress of it any longer. I don't feel personally that Christina was really an evil woman but rather a sad and somewhat inadequate person who saw killing the children and herself as the easy way out of the stresses of life. Equally I think not executing her would have been the ultimate cruelty.

Mom Who Killed Kids Is Eager to Die

April 30, 2000

LITTLE ROCK, Ark.(APBnews.com) -- Christina Marie Riggs is looking forward to being strapped to gurney and dying by lethal injection. Only then does she think she'll find peace in murdering her two children, Justin, 5, and Shelby, 2.

She believes she will be reunited with them in heaven and forgiven by God. "She is racked by guilt," said John Wesley Hall, her lawyer. "I talk to her every day. Like I said, her state of mind is good but she actually is looking forward to dying." She may get her wish this Tuesday.

Riggs, 29, has waived her death penalty appeals after the Arkansas Supreme Court upheld her conviction and sentence. She has even forbidden her lawyer from filing a clemency petition. If nothing changes, she will die by lethal injection in the Cummins Unit, outside Pine Bluff, between the hours of 8 and 9 p.m.

Was depression a factor?

There is no doubt that Riggs killed her children. She gave police an audio-taped confession detailing how she injected Justin with poison, hoping to make his death peaceful, but instead causing him agony. She then smothered both Justin and Shelby and tried to commit suicide.

But the debate over whether Riggs, a one-time licensed practical nurse, should die centers on why she killed her children. Those who feel she should be spared say the single mother developed severe depression that twisted her mind and made her believe it was an act of "mercy" to spare them from being unloved and unwanted after her death. "I think that she is comforted that she will be punished for what she did," said Mianette Layne, a criminal justice and psychology student, who has corresponded with Riggs over the years. "Her days are guilt-ridden, and she is not getting any help dealing with that guilt. ...She believes that she will be with her children when she dies, and this is also comforting to her." "This case is truly pitiful," said Rita Spellinger, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Arkansas. "Helping her commit suicide is not what we should be doing."

Rocks anguished child in arms The murders occurred in Riggs duplex home in Sherwood. On the night of Nov. 4, 1997, Riggs placed a small amount of Elavil, an antidepressant with sedative affects, into water and made Justin and Shelby drink it.

Later, Riggs injected a large dose of potassium chloride into Justin's neck, which awakened him in agony. She gave him another injection of morphine to ease the pain, and wept as she rocked him in her arms, according to court statements.

Then, she smothered Justin with a pillow. Riggs also smothered to death 2-year-old Shelby. She laid the two children side-by-side on a bed and covered them with a blanket. She then wrote a suicide note and left it on the nightstand.

She mailed a similar letter to Shelby's father the day before, authorities said. "I hope one day you will forgive me for taking my life and the life of my children," Riggs wrote. "But I can't live like this any more, and I couldn't bear to leave my children behind to be a burden on you or to be separated and raised apart from their fathers and live knowing their mother killed herself." Riggs then injected herself with potassium chloride and swallowed 28 tablets of Elavil.

'Her babies are dead'

The next day, when Riggs didn't show up for work, her mother, Carol Thomas, went to the house to find her. She found her daughter unconscious and the children dead. "My daughter and her babies are dead," she reported to police. Carol Thomas did not respond to requests for comment.

Hall, along with a psychologist and psychiatrist, said that her life was collapsing under the weight of being a single mother. Riggs had been arrested on a bad check charge and threatened with jail time if she issued any more bad checks.

She claimed she was having trouble getting support money from a child's father. She was working 12-hour shifts at Arkansas Heart Hospital, but it still wasn't enough to cover daycare and other expenses, she said. Riggs even claimed to have had to pawn her television and VCR to pay for Justin's birthday party.

Hall said that Riggs earned about $17,000 a year. She was also severely depressed, Hall stated. The sexual abuse she claimed to have suffered as a child, her failed relationships with men and a poor self-image over a weight problem helped turn her into a child killer, doctors and Hall argued in court.

Was murder an act of 'love?'

A psychiatrist testified that Riggs was a mentally ill woman who suffered severe depression, which led her to believe that it was "an act of love" to take her children with her in death. Doctors who talked to Riggs say she killed them out of "mercy" to save them from being separated after her death.

In addition, the psychologist and psychiatrist who testified on her behalf at trial said that Riggs' family has a long history of depression and suicide.

Riggs also claimed to have been sexually abused as a child, which caused her to internalize her feelings and suffer silently. But Pulaski County Prosecutor Larry Jegley says he doesn't buy Riggs' "excuses" for murdering her children. "Simply put, she's a self-centered, selfish, premeditated killer who did the unspeakable act of taking her own children's lives," Jegley told APBnews.com.

'She used every excuse in the world' Jegley said that to Riggs, the children were a "hindrance" and an "inconvenience." She locked them in their room for hours and left Justin and Shelby alone when she went out to Karaoke bars.

Other times she left the children with her mother. The allegation angered Hall, who said that if Riggs did lock Justin and Shelby in a room "it only happened one time." He said the woman who testified to that later admitted that she gave Riggs her own child to watch. "She used every excuse in the world," Jegley said. "I think the jury just saw her as the manipulative, self-centered person she really and truly is. She claims she was horribly depressed, she was overweight, she was a single mom, and she didn't have enough money. My response to that is welcome to America. Plenty of folks are in far worst situations than she was."

Prosecutors said that Riggs also claimed that while previously working at a hospital in Oklahoma City, she suffered traumatic stress disorder while treating victims of the April 1995 bombing. However, hospital officials later said there was no record of Riggs treating any bombing victims.

In addition, Jegley stated the children's fathers made most of their support payments, contrary to Riggs' claims she was having a difficult time obtaining money from them.

Justin was born out of wedlock to an Air Force airman and Shelby was the product of a failed marriage that ended in divorce. Jegley stated that he believes Riggs' suicide attempt was a ruse. He said she took just enough to render her unconscious.

'I want to die'

Police interviewed Riggs after she was revived and obtained an eight-minute, tape-recorded confession detailing the murders. Riggs had pleaded not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect at her trial in 1998. After being convicted, Riggs asked the jury for a death sentence. "I want to be with my babies," Riggs told the jury. "I started this out seven months ago. And I want you to give me the death penalty. ...This was a decision I made seven months ago." The jury granted her request.

Web site tells Riggs story Photographs of the children are posted on a Web site Layne started called "Voices For Christy." There's a photo of a happy baby Shelby. She's wearing a red dress with a pink bow. Another shows Justin playing with a toy.

The site also contains research on women who kill their children and three excerpts from Riggs' prison diaries. In these diaries, Riggs claims various factors led her to murder.

She says she was molested as a child and teenager, and began drinking and using marijuana when she was about 13. She wrote that because of her weight, she had a self-image problem and became a promiscuous teenager.

She became pregnant at 16 -- the father an African-American boy -- and gave up the child for adoption, she said in her diary. In 1991, she has became pregnant with Justin during an affair with a man serving in the Air Force. "He was so beautiful," Riggs said of Justin. "When I held him in my arms, I thought my heart would explode. I was so proud. ...I held Justin in my arms and looked into his little face. I became so scared. Would I be a good mom? Could I give him all he needed?"

Life 'not different' from ours

Riggs said that after Justin's father left, she got back together with an old boyfriend. He told her he wanted to marry her and treat Justin as his own son. The couple married, but divorced. That marriage produced Shelby, Riggs wrote.

Layne said she created the site to show the "fragile line" that separates Riggs from other people. "People are curious about how this sort of crime happens, and I wanted to put some information out there with some real research about why mother's killed their children," Layne said. "I wanted people to see that her life was not so different from the rest of ours. It was that moment that made it different, and I wanted people to see how fragile a line it is."

Layne's research suggests that psychological factors are present in many of the mothers who kill their children -- depression, psychosis and personality disorders. She states that social factors include marital problems, financial problems and social isolation.

Riggs: Evil or mad with depression?

Is Riggs just a selfish killer who took the lives of her children or a woman so beaten by life that her mind became ravaged by depression? It depends on who you ask. "Most decent folks' initial reaction to a parent taking his or her child's life ... is that she's got to be crazy," Jegley said. "People want to find an explanation for the unspeakable. You just have to acknowledge that some folks are evil. They are so wrapped up in themselves that they view children as property to be disposed of." The prosecutor's claims anger Hall. "He's just trying to justify killing her," Hall said. "I think the prosecutor is evil and it's more evil how they have twisted the facts. ...I think that people are so horrified and scared by this kind of crime that they have to draw a very clear line around these people, basically labeling them as pure evil so that they are not confused with the rest of us."

If Riggs enters the death house Tuesday, she will become the first woman executed in Arkansas since the state took over all executions from the county in 1913, state prison officials said. Hall said Riggs gets letters from people urging her to appeal her conviction. Her mother is with her each day from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., he said. Jim Harris, a spokesman for Gov. Mike Huckabee, said no applications for clemency have been filed.

Sexism and the death chamber

Chivalry lives when a woman must die

May 4, 2000

On Tuesday night in Varner, Ark., 28-year-old Christina Marie Riggs was executed for the 1997 murders of her two small children. She was given a lethal injection of potassium chloride, the drug she had originally planned to use to kill her children. (She suffocated them after a botched attempt of the drugging plan.)

Riggs, a former nurse, was put to death despite pleas for her life from anti-death-penalty groups including Amnesty International and the American Civil Libertes Union.

In fact, there was little difference between the execution of Riggs and the other 28 executions carried out in the United States so far this year, except that Riggs, who said she wanted to die to be with her "babies," had refused to appeal her sentence or to seek clemency from Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. And yet her death was much bigger news.

The cause for intense public soul-searching and beating of breasts was not the nature of Riggs' crime or her wish to die. It was her gender. It was, for all intents and purposes, a demonstration of garden-variety sexism. And this isn't the first time our hypocrisy has been blatantly displayed.

Riggs was the first woman to be executed in Arkansas in 150 years, and only the fifth executed in the nation since the U.S. Supreme Court lifted the ban on capital punishment in 1976.

Obviously, the very rarity of women's executions makes them newsworthy. But this is only the statistical manifestation of the stubborn gender discrimination that taints our attitude about capital punishment in this country.

Whether one sees the death penalty as justice or barbarism (and, for the record, I have no moral objection to imposing it for premeditated murder, though the risk of the state taking an innocent life is troubling enough to warrant opposition to the practice), surely the perpretrator's gender should be irrelevant.

But that is not the way it works in the real world. We are consistently more likely to seek mitigating circumstances for women's heinous deeds, to see female criminals as disturbed or victimized rather than evil. The thought of a woman in the death chamber makes people cringe -- even those who have no problem with sending a man to his death for his crimes.

It appears that chivalry still lives when a woman must die.

Two years ago, there were many more headlines and much more debate as Karla Faye Tucker awaited execution in Texas for a brutal double murder.

Tucker had become a born-again Christian and her clemency petition was backed by such unusual suspects as Christian Coalition leader Pat Robertson, Moral Majority founder Jerry Falwell and right-wing hero Oliver North -- all generally pro-capital punishment.

While most of Tucker's champions insisted that redemption and not womanhood was the issue, none had intervened on behalf of male murderers who had experienced similar death-row conversions.

And there was ample evidence to suggest that the support for "this sweet woman of God," as Robertson put it, was not entirely gender-neutral. On CNN's "Crossfire," when asked if the crusade to save Tucker was an instance of "misplaced chivalry," North gallantly replied, "I don't think chivalry can ever be misplaced" -- though he went on to insist that "gender is not a factor."

Meanwhile, on the left, the chivalrous Geraldo Rivera dispensed with any pretense of neutrality and issued a bizarre plea to Texas Gov. George W. Bush on his CNBC show: "Please, don't let this happen. This is -- it's very unseemly. Texas, manhood, macho swagger ... What are ya, going to kill a lady? Oh, jeez. Why?"

The lady in question, by the way, had used a pickax to dispatch two sleeping people (one of whom had made her angry by parking his motorbike in her living room) and later bragged that she experienced an orgasm with every swing.

American Civil Liberties Union

April 28, 2000

The Honorable Mike Huckabee
Governor, State of Arkansas

Re: Execution of Christina Riggs

Dear Governor Huckabee:

I understand that you believe that, under Arkansas law, the Governor does not have the power to grant clemency to a prisoner who has not asked for clemency first. I believe that question is debatable.

However, you do have the power to grant Christina, or any prisoner, a reprieve, to give her more time to consider further appeals and a clemency request. I am asking you to do that now, know that there are many who would do everything in their power to persuade Christina to do so.

Imagine this scenario: a man who claims he is innocent is convicted of capital murder; he waives all appeals and decides to die; another man comes forward, confesses and has the DNA sample to prove it. Even if the innocent man does not ask for clemency, certainly in a just and democratic state the governor must have the right to intervene on his behalf and say, "this state will not execute an innocent man."

I understand that you have a keen interest in due process, especially in capital cases. In considering your decision, please also take these facts about the trial into consideration. Although the police were instructed not to speak to Christina out of the presence of her attorney, a statement was taken from her while she was in a drugged state. Please see below the excerpt from her original appeal:

At 9:20 a.m., with Appellant's family still demanding to see her, and officers telling them that she was incapable of seeing them because she was in no condition to talk to them, Dets. Jones and Williams went into Appellant's room, Mirandiz-ed her, and pro-ceed-ed to take an eight minute statement.

At times, Appellant was variously crying uncontrollably, talking fairly rationally, did not know where she was or what day it was, and was then delusional and hallucinating. One could infer from the statement that, as soon as Appellant said something truly delusional, the officers immediately cut off the questioning. The statement ended at 9:28 a.m.

Two minutes after the statement was concluded, a doctor came into her room and found her unconscious and difficult to wake and talk to. [My emphasis] He found that she was still suffering greatly from the effect of the drug overdose. Shortly thereafter, Appellant was charged with the capital murder of her two children and moved to the County Jail. She was still suffering from the ef-fects of the drug overdose and was not aware of what was going on. . . .

This is the first case to truly deal with a suspect in a crime being under the direct influence of a powerful drug and literally hallucinating during the taking […] of a statement. Also, the police knew that Appellant's family had retained her a lawyer and agreed not to talk to her and then took a statement anyway. The statement is involuntary under the "totality of circumstances" for multiple reasons.

It would be a terrible shame if the State of Arkansas executed a person with mental illness because 1) a statement was taken from her in a drug-induced hallucinatory state, 2) the jury failed to judge her mental state properly, and 3) she was too depressed or deluded to ask for help herself.

Thank you for considering a reprieve for Christina Riggs. This would allow the possibility of her pursuing federal appeals, and enable our criminal justice system to work to its fullest potential in the matter of life and death.

Sincerely,

Rita Sklar, Executive Director, ACLU of Arkansas

Christina Marie Riggs (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.

The murder

Riggs, a licensed nurse, was convicted of murder by smothering her two preschool-aged children in their beds at the family's Sherwood home. On November 4, 1997, Riggs obtained the anti-depressant Elavil from her pharmacist, the painkiller morphine and the toxic potassium chloride from the hospital where she worked. The heart-stopping potassium chloride is the same drug used in the lethal cocktail injected into condemned inmates in the death house.

Riggs gave the children a small amount of Elavil to put them to sleep. Then she placed each of the children in their beds. About 10 p.m., she injected 5 year old Justin with undiluted potassium chloride. But unless it is diluted, the drug causes burning and pain. Justin woke and cried out in terror. She then smothered the boy with a pillow.

Moving to her 2 year old Shelby, Riggs passed on the potassium chloride injection because of the pain it had caused Justin. She suffocated her daughter with a pillow. Riggs then placed the children side-by-side on her bed and covered them with a blanket.

She wrote suicide notes saying "I hope one day you will forgive me for taking my life and the life of my children. But I can’t live like this any more, and I couldn’t bear to leave my children behind to be a burden on you or to be separated and raised apart from their fathers and live knowing their mother killed herself.".

She then took 28 Elavil tablets, normally a lethal dose, and injected herself with enough undiluted potassium chloride to kill five people. The Elavil took effect, and she fell unconscious to the floor.

The next day, she was discovered by Officers David Smith and Steve Henker after a call by her mother Carol Thomas, who had became concerned that she couldn't reach her daughter. The officers entered her apartment and found Riggs and rushed her to the hospital. She was taken to the Baptist Memorial Medical Center in North Little Rock for treatment and arrested by Sherwood police immediately after her release the following day.

The Pulaski County Coroner Mark Malcolm estimated that the children had been dead for 10 - 14 hours before they were discovered. After her arrest, Christina made a detailed taped confession to the police explaining how she had killed her children.

Trial and appeals

Christina came to trial at the Pulaski County Circuit Court in June 1998 and entered a plea of not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect. Her defense did not dispute the fact that she had killed her children. Her defense attorneys claimed that she had a long history of depression and low self esteem. She was relatively poor, a single mom and very overweight at 280 pounds. It seems clear that when she killed her children that she intended to kill herself too and one psychiatrist testified that she was a mentally ill woman who suffered severe depression, which led her to believe that it was "an act of love" to take her children with her.

She did not want the children separated after her death. The specialists who testified in her defense said that her family had a long history of depression and suicide. She was said to have suffered from an hereditary chemical imbalance that caused depression. Christina also claimed to have been sexually abused as a child, which caused her to internalize her feelings.

It had also been claimed, prior to the trial, that she had become traumatized by working as a nurse at the scene of the Oklahoma City bombing. This was later disputed and was not used in evidence by the defense. She did work as a nurse in Oklahoma City but there was no record of her actually being at the scene of the bombing or treating its victims.

The prosecution painted a rather different picture, however. They claimed that she killed the children because they were an inconvenience to her and that she had planned the murders for several weeks in advance. They also claimed that she left them alone in the house or with her mother while she went out at night to Karaoke bars. The eight minute long taped confession was permitted to be entered as evidence and played to the jury giving them a chilling account of how she planned and carried out the killings.

On June 30th 1998, the jury of 7 women and 5 men took just 55 minutes to find her guilty of two counts of first degree murder. Christina collapsed in the court on receiving the verdict. The trial now moved into the sentencing phase and Christina told the jurors "I want to die. I want to be with my babies. I want you to give me the death penalty."

During the penalty phase, Riggs would not allow attorneys to put on a defense, saying she wanted a death sentence. The jury obliged and Circuit Judge Marion Humphrey sentenced her to death by lethal injection. Christina said "thank you" and squeezed her attorney's hand. The initial execution date was set for August 15th 1998.

She did allow a motion to be filed for a retrial, however, claiming she did not get a fair trial because her police confession (the main evidence against her) was admitted into evidence. Her attorney, John Wesley Hall Jr., told the court that Christina was still under the influence of the Elavil when she gave her confession to police and that Elavil can cause confusion. She did not know where she was or what day it was and that she was hallucinating about the officers arriving on an escalator to talk to her,

It was also claimed that the prosecuting attorney made prejudicial opening remarks to the jury and that they did not take their oath seriously. These motions were rejected by Circuit Judge John Langston. The state Supreme Court overturned all appeals and accepted a motion from her in July 1998 that she was competent to be executed.

Execution

The Arkansas state governor Mike Huckabee reviewed the case but declined to intervene and eventually the execution was set for Tuesday 3rd May, to be carried out between the hours of 8 and 9 p.m. in the Cummins Unit, outside Pine Bluff. Christina was flown from female death row in the McPherson Unit to the Cummins Unit three days prior to execution.

The execution began 18 minutes late because of difficulty in finding a suitable vein to put the catheters into. Christina agreed to have the catheters placed in veins in her wrists. Her last words, strapped to the gurney, were "There is no way no words can express how sorry I am for taking the lives of my babies." she said. "Now I can be with my babies, as I always intended." She also said "I love you, my babies". The execution went smoothly and she was certified dead nine minutes later.

Riggs was executed by lethal injection at the Cummins unit of the Arkansas Department of Corrections on Thurday, May 2, 2000. Riggs was the 22nd person executed by the state of Arkansas since Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972), after new capital punishment laws were passed in Arkansas and that came into force on March 23, 1973. She was also the 5th female murderer executed in U.S. and the 1st female murderer executed in Arkansas since 1976.