McALESTER, Okla. -- Victims' family members said the execution of convicted killer Wanda Jean Allen brought them closure as they decried protesters who fought the nation's first execution of a black woman since 1954.
Allen, 41, raised her head and smiled, and a tear appeared in the corner of her eye before she received a lethal dose of drugs Thursday night at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary. "Father forgive them," she said, echoing Christ's words as he was crucified. "They know not what they do."
She was condemned for killing her lesbian lover, Gloria Leathers, whom she met in prison. She served two years for fatally shooting childhood friend Dedra Pettus in 1981.
"We're the victims, not Wanda Jean," said Leathers' daughter, LaToya Leathers. "We are the victims and justice has been served."
In the days before her death, Allen served as the rallying point for death penalty foes, including the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who was arrested along with two dozen other demonstrators Wednesday.
Gov. Frank Keating refused Allen's late request for a 30-day stay, and last-minute rejections by appeals courts cleared the way for the death sentence.
"This is not easy because I'm dealing with a fellow human being," said Keating, an ardent death penalty supporter. "This is not easy because I'm dealing with a fellow Oklahoman."
Outside the prison gates, death penalty supporters and opponents gathered in clusters, talking in low voices and shivering in the cold.
Ann Scott, whose daughter Elaine Marie Scott was killed in 1991, said she resented Jackson coming to Oklahoma to try to stop the execution.
"I highly resent his being here and teaching Oklahomans civil disobedience," she said. "I think the system works."
Ajamu Baraka, acting director of Amnesty International USA's Program to Abolish the Death Penalty, said Oklahoma had no business executing Allen.
"Any state that exercises this ultimate punishment against a person who is mentally impaired is acting not only immorally, but also irrationally and illegally," Baraka said.
Before Thursday, 44 women had been executed in the United States since 1900. The last execution of a black woman came in 1954, when Ohio electrocuted Betty Jean Butler.
The most recent woman to die was Christina Marie Riggs, 28, executed in Arkansas last May for smothering her two young children.
Keating considered giving Allen a stay based on the narrow issue of whether the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board had enough information regarding her education.
Allen's attorneys have pointed to her score, a 69, on an IQ test she took in the 1970s, arguing she is in the range of mental retardation.
Prosecutors said Allen testified during the penalty phase of her trial that she had graduated from high school and received a medical assistant certificate from a college.
But they said Allen dropped out of high school at 16 and never finished course work in the medical assistant program.
The execution was the second of eight planned in Oklahoma over the next four weeks.
