America has carried out the rare execution of a woman after she had spent eight years on death row over the torture and starving of a nine-year-old boy.
Lisa Ann Coleman, of Arlington, Texas, told witnesses “tell them I finished strong” before dying by lethal injection.
The 38-year-old was found guilty of the 2004 murder of schoolboy Davontae Williams, who had been beaten and bound, and whose body was found with more than 250 scars,
She, along with her girlfriend, Marcella Williams, who was the boy’s mother, also starved him to death.
At the time paramedics found him he weighed just two and a half stone.
Coleman was given a lethal injection shortly 6.13pm on Wednesday before being pronounced dead at 6:24pm.
Prison officials described the execution was “very peaceful” and that they only heard a “short gasp” before she died.
Before the lethal drug was injected into her inside the execution chamber at the Texas’ Huntsville prison, Coleman expressed love for her family and thanked her lawyers.
“I just want to tell my family I love them, my son, I love him,” she said. “God is good ... I’m done.”
She smiled and blew kisses at the supporters gathered and added: “God bless you all.”
Before her death she spent time playing word games with other inmates before being transferred to Huntsville for the lethal injection.
Five family members and friends witnessed the execution.
No one showed up to represent the victim, Davontae.
Coleman was living with her girlfriend Williams, in Arlington the boy’s starved corpse was found on July 26, 2004.
She is currently serving a life sentence for his death, after reaching a plea deal with prosecutors before the trial in 2006.
Coleman was the 517th person to be executed in the state since 1982, the year Texas reinstated the death penalty following a 1976 Supreme Court decision that allowed capital punishment to resume.
She is the ninth person executed in the Lone Star State this year and only the 14th woman in 38 years.
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