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More U.S. NewsShawna Forde Sentenced to Death
Shawna Forde, the anti-immigrant zealot convicted of killing a 9-year-old girl and her father, was sentenced to death by a Tucson jury today. Terry Greene Sterling on Forde’s abusive past—and the wingnuts who call her a martyr.
For three days, a female Minuteman-turned-killer sat stonily in a Tucson, Arizona, courtroom as her lawyers fought to save her life by portraying her as an impulsive, detached, foolish narcissist who could not overcome her abuse-ridden childhood. They argued that Shawna Forde’s early years had been so traumatic that she should not be put to death for masterminding a 2009 home invasion in which 9-year-old Brisenia Flores and her father Raul were slaughtered on the Arizona border.
Gallery: Women on Death Row
But in the end not even Shawna Forde’s childhood history, marked by repeated instances of sexual and physical abuse, neglect, and abandonment fueled by religious fanaticism, could save her. After deliberating for about a day, 11 women and one man sentenced Forde to death in Pima County Superior Court on Tuesday. The method of death, Judge John Leonardo ruled, would be lethal injection. Forde will be the third woman housed on Arizona’s death row.
Her death sentence will be automatically appealed, and Judge John Leonardo ordered that her mental-health records be transferred with the appeal.
Those mental-health records, plus oral family histories and the testimony of psychologists, Forde’s lawyers had hoped, would cause the jury to spare Forde.
Gallery: Shawna Forde Patrols the Border
Shawna Forde as her verdict was read on Tuesday. (Photo: Jonathon LeFaive, Pool)
Now 43, Forde was the seventh of nine children (from five different fathers) born into a family paralyzed by intergenerational sexual and physical abuse, according to her defense team. Forde’s mother, Rena Caudle, said in a court video that when Forde was a 10-month-old baby, she dropped her off with a relative because Caudle’s boyfriend didn’t like Shawna. (The same relative who took Shawna in had molested Caudle when she was younger, Caudle told investigators.)
Caudle later became a devout Jehovah’s Witness, and placed Shawna in informal foster households after consulting with church “elders.” By the time Washington state officials severed Caudle’s parental rights and arranged an adoption when Shawna was 5, she had lived in several homes and had been molested and abused, according to a defense investigator.
Shawna Forde later accused her adoptive father, a Boeing worker named Jeep Breightam who wore train-conductor overalls, of routinely molesting her while her adoptive mother Patti worked in the late afternoon at a bowling alley.
According to defense investigator Margaret DiFrank, Jeep professed his love for young Shawna because she was clean, and took her on trips in which he insisted she ride naked in the passenger seat.
No charges were ever filed against Jeep, who is now dead, and Joey Cheblik, a family friend who was Forde’s playmate and still “has a space in my heart for Shawna” disputed the allegations.
As a teen, according to defense witnesses, Forde shoplifted clothes from Sears and J.C. Penney’s, frequently ran away from home, had stints in homes for troubled youth, lived on the streets of Seattle and supported herself through prostitution, became addicted from age 12 on Halcion, Darvocet, Valium and Tylenol with codeine. She started smoking pot at 10 and went on to cocaine.
She tried to kill herself three times with drug overdoses as an adult. She married and divorced five husbands—including a Nicaraguan taxi driver she married to, ironically, to fix his papers.
Through all of this she had three children. One baby died of SIDS in Alaska, and The Arizona Daily Star reported that prosecutors would not present two witnesses who would say Forde told them she killed the baby.
Forde worked as a Boeing electrician and as a beautician, did volunteer work with homeless people, and tried to bond with her birth mother, Rena Caudle, who was reportedly proud of Forde’s border-vigilante activism. According to trial testimony, Forde often boasted that she would kick down doors and “change America” as the leader of her tiny Minutemen American Defense.
Dolmance
Shawna Forde was not "booted out" from the Minutemen because she was "unstable," as CNN and other news organizations are reporting ad nauseum. She was quite popular with the Minutemen and was trying to take over that organization. When she couldn't be the President of that organization, she left of her own accord to start her own group.
cryptoad
Death is too easy and quick of a punishment for this Teabagger!
Lordcron
That's the problem. To many Nutjobs with guns and no real intellect to handle that kind of power. Most people can't handle power. Even in the most minimum capacity. This is the result.
Sam Steele
Shawna Forde should not get the death penalty. Rather, she should face life in prison without parole so that she can hear for the rest of her life the voice of a 9-year-old girl plea for mercy.
By executing Shawna Forde, the state of Arizona is letting her still her conscience forever and letting her avoid the awful truth about herself.
But you know how it is with our criminal justice system: we favour the criminal over the victim. The victim's mother will be tormented by her daughter's cries for help for the rest of her life while her daughter's killer won't have to hear that same voice.
However, everybody outside Arizona knows how little Mexicans really count.
jerichothedrifter
I seriously doubt that Shawna Forde has enough of a conscience to be affected that way.
mmarsh
Sam
Gotta agree with Jericothedrifter
Forde doesn't have a conscience. She is simply an evil and narcissistic person who thinks she is some modern day Joanne of Arc on immigration. I doubt she feels any real guilt to what she did.
Preatorian
I bet money that the kid she killed isn't on her mind and probably never will, not atleast in the way you think.
Should the state kill her?
That's a tough one for me. I don't like the idea of State sanctioned death but I want a strong response to crime, is there a middle ground?
Wulfe2k
I guess it's a question of whether death is the only penalty that comes close to justice.
PigFarmer
That is the sentence that I would have given Timothy McVeigh. I would have had his entire cell collaged with photos of his victims and I would have piped in audio of the wounded survivors 24/7/365 for the rest of his miserable life.
jerichothedrifter
Where's Aslanleon to bring in his "doubts" as to her guilt??
cryptoad
Roy is licking his wounds from last night's thread and looking over old post trying to figure out what he has said and not said...........it may be beyond repair and have to create another user name again.
glenndale
"an emotionally detached, narcissistic woman with a low-average IQ, impaired insight and judgment, and several personality disorders"
Hmmm, sounds like Sarah Palin.
cryptoad
Sounds like a lot like the Teabaggers on DB,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
djanimaequeen
To call this piece of trash child killer a martyr only shows how demented the wingnut movement really is. Disgusting.
GraniteSkyline
I don't have enough expletives to describe this woman--f*cking c*nt b*tch isn't enough.
delta36
She should be wandering the yard with a clutch of hardcore Mexican women prisoners shadowing her movements. Problem is she'll join an Aryan Sisterhood (is there such a thing?) in charge of weapons inventory.
tomcat2010
Interesting to note how liberals want to tie this woman's criminal activities to the Tea Party; as if they're running on a platform of violence to illegals.
You people are f'ing clueless and ideological retards. Shawna Forde needs to answer for Shawna Forde's behavior. Not the Tea Party.
PigFarmer
"f'ing clueless"? Pot, meet Kettle. tomcat, if nothing else, I will credit you with being an authority on the subject of cluelessness.
mmarsh
I just wonder if she'll even make it to death row...Kiddy killers are the lowest of the low in the US prison hierarchy. As a convicted white supremist that killed a Latino girl, she better watch her back, cause someone someones prison rep is going to go up for shanking her, especially amongst the Hispanic gangs.
chefbob50
And I would see to it, that individual got as many cigarettes and chocolate bars as she wanted for the rest of her sentence...But more than likely Forde will be in isolation for the rest of her life...
TomJoad186
But there were headless bodies in the desert, right? Where's the pardon from the uber-right?
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