Lisa Ann Coleman

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Coleman lived with her girlfriend, Marcella Williams, and Williams' two children in Arlington, Texas.[2] Coleman had been to prison twice, for burglary and for possession with intent to deliver a controlled substance.[1] Marcella Willams' son Davontae was born prematurely in 1995, and he had developmental disabilities. When Davontae was two months old, the Williams home first became the subject of a Child Protective Services (CPS) investigation. The complaint alleged that Marcella Williams, who was 14 at the time, was not watching her son. CPS caseworkers monitored the home for six months.[2]

In 1999, Davontae and his one-year-old sister were removed from the home due to allegations that Davontae had been hit with a telephone cord. When CPS investigated, Coleman denied striking Davontae with a cord, but Marcella Williams said that Davontae had been bound with it. Marcella Williams regained custody after a year when she met the requirements set by CPS; as part of this arrangement, Williams had been ordered to stay away from Coleman. The home was investigated a total of six times by CPS for allegations of neglect, emotional abuse and physical abuse.[2]

On July 26, 2004, Marcella Williams called 9-1-1 and told a dispatcher that Davontae Williams had stopped breathing. When responders arrived, they determined that Davontae had been dead for at least several hours. The nine-year-old weighed 35 pounds when he died and had 250 scars on his body, including infected wounds on his wrists and legs where he had been bound with plastic extension cords. There was a tear in the child's lip, and another one where the ear meets the side of the head.[3] A blood stain was found on a golf club in the home, suggesting to investigators that Davontae may have been hit with it.[4]

Coleman and Marcella Williams were arrested, charged with injury to a child, and held in jail in Arlington on $200,000 bond.[5] Those charges were later upgraded to capital murder.[3] The Tarrant County Medical Examiner's Office said that malnutrition caused Davontae's death; they said that pneumonia also contributed to his demise. During the ensuing investigation, Coleman told authorities that she sometimes struck Davontae with a belt and that sometimes, with Marcella Williams' help, she tied Davontae up.[6]

After the deaths of Davontae and several other children in Texas, the governor's office opened an inquiry into CPS child maltreatment investigations. A spokesperson for CPS acknowledged that the Williams home had been the subject of CPS involvement for several years; she said that the family moved frequently in an attempt to avoid CPS investigations.[2] Caseworkers had lost track of the family in 2002. Around the same time, he stopped attending school, and school district employees were told that he had moved to another school. When some of Davontae's family members asked about him, Coleman and Marcella Williams had told them that Davontae was living with other relatives.[3] In 2005, a Texas Senate bill sponsored by Jane Nelson gave $200 million to CPS to hire and train additional staff members.[7]

While Marcella Williams entered a guilty plea in exchange for a sentence of life imprisonment and will not be eligible for parole until 2044, Coleman rejected a plea deal and went to trial for capital murder in 2006.[6] Coleman's defense attorney, Michael Heiskell, said that Davontae was small because of his history of prematurity. He said that Coleman did not actually live with Marcella Williams and her three children. Heiskell said that because Davontae was hyperactive, they sometimes restrained him so that he would not hurt himself or his family members. Davontae Williams had been a victim of incompetent parenting, not murder, he said.[8] After the jury deliberated for an hour, Coleman was convicted of capital murder.[6]

In the punishment phase of the trial, Coleman's attorneys raised several potential mitigating circumstances in an attempt to spare Coleman a death sentence. Coleman was conceived when her mother was raped by Coleman's step-grandfather. She was beaten with extension cords by an uncle and was sent from one foster home to another as a child.[9] Coleman was stabbed in the back when she was eleven years old.[10] A relative provided Coleman with drugs and alcohol when she was in her teens. A child abuse expert testified for the defense about the intergenerational effects of abuse.[9] Coleman's lawyers also said that Coleman had bipolar disorder. The jury rejected the mitigating circumstances and sentenced Coleman to the death penalty.[10]

Coleman was represented during her appeals by John Stickels of Arlington. She also received assistance from Brad Levenson, the lead attorney at the Office of Capital Writs (OCW), the agency responsible for representing Texas death row inmates during their appeals. Stickels felt that Coleman was being unfairly targeted as a black lesbian. To sustain a capital murder charge, the State of Texas had needed to prove the existence of an aggravating circumstance such as a second crime that Coleman committed in relation to the murder.[11][nb 1] Citing evidence that Davontae had been bound and locked in a pantry, prosecutors advanced kidnapping as the aggravating circumstance in Coleman's case.[11]

In subsequent motions, Stickels questioned whether a child could be kidnapped in his own home. Levenson said that Coleman's original attorneys had failed to investigate evidence that would have disproven the kidnapping allegation, such as the claims of neighbors that Davontae had appeared happy and unrestrained at functions within his apartment complex in the days before he died.[11]

On September 16, 2014, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit rejected the argument against the kidnapping charge, and the U.S. Supreme Court elected not to issue a ruling in the case. The next day, Coleman was executed by lethal injection using the drug pentobarbital.[11] While she was the 1389th person executed in the U.S. since executions resumed in 1976, she was only the 15th woman executed during that time.[13]

• List of women executed in the United States since 1976