Christina Marie Riggs
Christina Marie Riggs was convicted of the November 1997 murders of her two children, Justin Dalton Thomas, age five, and Shelby Alexis Riggs, age two. Riggs was a licensed practical nurse, and she planned to kill her children using drugs obtained from her workplace. After an injection failed to kill her son, she smothered both children and then attempted suicide.
Defense attorneys cited Riggs's depression and post‑traumatic stress disorder during her trial, but she did not present a defense in the penalty phase. She waived her appeals and was executed by lethal injection less than two years after her convictions, becoming the first woman executed in Arkansas since 1845. Riggs also remains the youngest woman to be executed in the United States in the modern era.
Early life
Riggs was born in Lawton, Oklahoma, and grew up in Oklahoma City. She stated that she was sexually abused as a child and began using alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana by age fourteen. She became pregnant at sixteen and placed the child for adoption. After finishing high school, she became a licensed practical nurse and worked in home health care and at a Veterans Administration hospital.Riggs became pregnant with her son Justin in 1991. The child's father was not involved in their lives, but before Justin was born in June 1992, she began dating Jon Riggs. Christina and Jon married in 1993 and had a daughter, Shelby, in December 1994. The family moved to Sherwood, Arkansas, in 1995, where her mother lived, and Riggs obtained a job at Baptist Hospital. Christina and Jon later divorced after she said he struck Justin in the stomach.
Murders
Riggs's children were killed in their beds at the family's home in Sherwood. She had planned to give them a combination of potassium chloride, amitriptyline, and morphine, obtaining the amitriptyline from a local pharmacy and taking the other drugs from the hospital where she worked.Riggs injected the potassium chloride into Justin first, but the undiluted drug caused pain rather than killing him. She attempted to inject Justin with morphine to ease his pain, but when it had no effect, she smothered him. She then smothered her daughter, Shelby, without injecting her, after witnessing the pain the potassium had caused Justin. She laid the children on her bed, covered them with a blanket, and wrote suicide notes. She then attempted suicide by taking a large quantity of amitriptyline and injecting herself with undiluted potassium chloride. Nineteen hours later, her mother found her unconscious on the floor of her home.
Trial and conviction
At her June 1998 trial, Riggs argued that she was not guilty by reason of insanity, citing depression and the trauma she experienced while working as a nurse near the site of the Oklahoma City bombing. Prosecutors argued that Riggs committed the murders out of hatred for her children, and a Pulaski County jury convicted her. During the sentencing phase, she prevented her attorneys from presenting a defense, stating that she wanted to be executed. She later convinced the court to allow her to drop her appeals.Riggs was held at the McPherson Unit, which included the female death row, until her execution. The Arkansas execution chamber is located at the Cummins Unit.