Betty Lou Beets was executed in Texas, two weeks before...

Betty Lou Beets was executed in Texas, two weeks before her 63rd birthday, for the murder of her fifth husband. The UN Special Rapporteurs on extra judicial, summary or arbitrary executions and on violence against women, Asma Jahangir and Radhika Coomaraswamy, were among those who expressed concern that the severe physical and sexual abuse suffered by Betty Lou Beets since childhood, including at the hands of various spouses, was not made known to the jury which sentenced her to death.In a letter, the Special Rapporteurs had urged the Governor to exercise the prerogative of mercy in the case and to refrain from carrying out the execution in observance of the de facto moratorium on the execution of women in the United States since the death by lethal injection of Karla Faye Tucker in Texas on 3 February 1998. Beets was the second woman to be executed in Texas since the beginning of the last century, after Karla Faye Tucker. Tucker's execution "brought worldwide condemnation of a state death penalty process incapable of showing mercy to a woman who had reformed her life and become a positive role model for other inmates", according to the Rapporteurs. The letter followed a similar appeal the experts sent to United States Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright on 2 February.