She claimed that Mallory then drove to a secluded, wooded area and immediately began threatening her. She claimed he then raped her, beat her, sodomized her, and put rubbing alcohol in her bleeding private parts after wrapping a cord around her neck.
He was shot several times. A few of the bullets struck close to his left lung, causing hemorrhaging and ultimately, his demise. After untying her and demanding her to lay down, Wuornos said she reached for her gun and shot Mallory several times. Police also said that she changed her story numerous times before settling on the self-defense story. State of Florida vs. During junior high, Wuornos began exhibiting hearing loss, vision problems, and trouble in school.
Her IQ was established at 81, in the low dull-normal range. An IQ at or below 70 is generally accepted as indicating mental retardation. Following the U. Virginia in , the mentally retarded cannot be sentenced to death.
School officials urged that Wuornos receive counseling and tried to improve her behavior by administering a mild tranquilizer. She waited six months before revealing she was pregnant, for which her grandparents blamed her. Her grandfather later sent her away and forced her to give up the child for adoption.
After her grandmother died, her alcoholic grandfather threatened to kill her and her brother if they weren't removed from his house. At age 15 she became a ward of the court. She soon dropped out of school and began engaging in prostitution, as well as alcohol and drug abuse. Her brother died of cancer at 21, and her grandfather committed suicide.
Three defense psychologists concluded Wuornos suffered from borderline personality disorder at the time of her crime, resulting in extreme mental or emotional disturbance. They said her ability to conform her conduct to the law was substantially impaired, and she exhibited evidence of brain damage.
The defense attempted to portray her as a woman who had lived a horrible life of victimization and violence, with little help from anyone, and who later lashed out at one of her victimizers. The 5 aggravating circumstances found were: 1. Wuornos had a previous felony conviction involving the use or threat of violence. The jury was not a jury of her peers. These were law-and-order Floridians, church-going types. There were no prostitutes on her jury. There were no feminist advocates on her jury.
They dismiss you. To complicate matters, the prosecutor [John Tanner]…had a really negative view of prostitutes. So, he went for her blood, because she was not only a woman, she was a prostitute. In the end, it came down to gender and prostitution, but the jury was never educated on what prostitution can do to a woman over a year period or what it would mean if a John got dangerously violent with a prostitute. Is she expected to just lay down and die? What if she fights back?
What do we do about her then? The jurors never got to understand any of these issues. Do you believe if the jury had been educated on the trauma of prostitution and what Wuornos had endured, that the outcome would have been different?
Yes, I think they would have found her guilty and might not have recommended a death sentence. Also, they should only have been focused on the first murder. They should not have known about the subsequent six or seven [that Wuornos confessed to and was expected to be charged for], but [due to the pre-trial media spectacle], they did.
How could they believe self-defense, if they knew she had gone on to do it again and again and again? There might have been a smidgen of mercy in understanding the whole picture. Many male serial killers are given life sentences with no parole. It could have happened here too. In your opinion, did Wuornos fit the description of a serial killer?
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