Female convict spared death penalty at eleventh hour in Tennessee
A convict who was due to be the first woman to be executed in America for the last five years, has been spared at the eleventh hour amid claims she was a victim of severe beatings by her husband.
Gaile Owens was due to die by lethal injection on September 28 after being convicted in 1986 of hiring another man to kill her partner Ron.
A Facebook campaign and another dedicated web page were launched to try and stop the execution in Tennessee and thousands signed a petition.
Tennessee's governor has stepped in to prevent the first execution of a female convict in the US since 2005.
Phil Bredesen, the state's Democratic governor, said he spared Owens, 57, after a review of the case.
It showed that the grandmother had admitted her guilt and that other people who committed similar crimes generally drew lesser sentences.
Bredesen said that Owens' claims that she had been physically abused by her husband were "inconclusive".
But he said claims she may have been suffering from "battered woman syndrome" were another factor in his decision.
The governor said most cases similar to this one ended with a sentence of life in prison rather than death.
Owens had solicited several men in poor Memphis neighborhoods with offers of up to US$10,000 to kill her husband.
There are 90 men and one woman still on death row in Tennessee.
