Wanda Jean Allen

Allen was the first black woman to be executed in the United States since 1954.

Wanda Jean Allen (August 17, 1959 – January 11, 2001) was sentenced to death in 1989 for the murder of Gloria Jean Leathers, 29, her longtime girlfriend.

Wanda Jean Allen was born on August 17, 1959, the second of eight children.

Her mother was an alcoholic; her father left home after Wanda's last sibling was born and the family lived in public housing and scraped by on public assistance.

At the age of 12, Allen was hit by a truck and knocked unconscious, and at 14 or 15 she was stabbed in the left temple.

It was found that Allen's actual abilities were markedly impaired and that her IQ was 69.

Found particularly significant was that the left hemisphere of her brain was dysfunctional, impairing her comprehension, her ability to logically express herself, and her ability to analyze cause and effect relationships.

It was also concluded that Allen was more chronically vulnerable than others to becoming disorganized by everyday stresses, and thus more vulnerable to a loss of control under stress.

By age 17, she had dropped out of high school.

She was the sixth woman to be executed since executions resumed in the United States of America in 1977.

Evidence that Leathers had a history of violent conduct, and that she had stabbed a woman to death in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1979, was central to the self-defense argument at Allen's trial.

Allen testified that she feared Leathers because she had boasted to her about the killing.

The defense sought to corroborate this claim with testimony from Leathers' mother, whom Leathers had told about the stabbing.

However, the prosecution objected, and the court prohibited the introduction of such testimony because it was considered hearsay.

The prosecutor depicted Allen as a remorseless liar.

In 1981, Allen was sharing an apartment with Dedra Pettus, a childhood friend -turned-girlfriend.

On June 29, 1981, they got into an argument, and Allen shot and killed Pettus.

In her 1981 confession, Allen stated that she accidentally shot Pettus from roughly 30 feet away while returning fire from Pettus' boyfriend.

However, the forensic evidence was inconsistent with Allen's story; in particular, a police expert believed that bruises and powder burns on Pettus' body indicated that Allen had pistol-whipped her, then shot her at point-blank range.

Nevertheless, prosecutors cut a deal with Allen, and she received a four-year sentence in exchange for a guilty plea to a manslaughter charge.

She served two years of the sentence.

Pettus was buried at Trice Hill Cemetery in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Seven years after the death of Dedra Pettus, Allen was living with her girlfriend Gloria Jean Leathers.

The two met in prison and had a turbulent and violent relationship.

On December 2, 1988, Leathers, 29, was shot in front of The Village Police Department in Oklahoma City.

Fifteen minutes before the shooting, the two women were involved in a dispute at a grocery store.

A city officer escorted the two women to their house and stood by while Leathers collected her belongings.

Before Leathers left the house, Allen asked her to "stay and attempt to work out their difficulties."

When Allen followed Leathers to her car, Leathers grabbed a garden rake, and struck Allen in the face with the tool.

Leathers and her mother left and drove to file a complaint against Allen.

Allen followed them, claiming that she was trying to get Leathers not to leave her.

When Allen approached Leathers in the parking lot, she saw Leathers still had the rake.

Subsequently, Allen returned to her car, grabbed a gun, and then, when she saw Leathers closely approaching, fired one shot that severely wounded Leathers.

Leathers' mother witnessed the shooting.

Two police officers and a dispatcher heard the shot fired, but no police department employee witnessed the shooting.

The police recovered a .38-caliber handgun they believe was used in the shooting near the women's home.

Leathers died from the injury three days later, on December 5, 1988.

Leathers was buried at Green Acres Memorial Gardens Cemetery, Sperry in Tulsa County, Oklahoma.

The state charged Allen with first-degree murder and announced that it would seek the death penalty.

Her final appeals and the last three months of her life were chronicled by filmmaker Ivana Barrios in the documentary The Execution of Wanda Jean (2002).