Angeline was charged with first-degree murder in McKnight's death. Under a Virginia statute making a second killing within three years punishable by death, she was charged with capital murder in Jenkins's death. The case is expected to draw a lot of attention in a state second to Texas in the total number of executions since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said Americans are uncomfortable with executing women. Although charged with 15 percent of the killings, females have accounted for 6 of the 706 people executed, or 0.8 percent, since the death penalty was restored.
Independence seems an unlikely place for history to be made.
The seat of Grayson County, just north of the North Carolina border, it is hemmed in by mountains. The pace is so slow that the entire county has just one intersection with stoplights and no fast-food restaurants. Five local factories have closed in the past year, and most of the population growth is from retirees moving back to where they were born. Although the county boasts one of the lowest crime rates in Virginia, the handful of killings here over the last decade have been notable. In a case publicized around the world, two white men were convicted of burning alive and beheading a black man in 1997.