‘Youngest female killers’ beg for lives

Death sentences ... Tiffany Cole and Emilia Carr are among the youngest female killers on death row in America. Picture: ABC Source: Supplied

AMERICA'S youngest female killers on death row have issued a new plea for their lives, saying they are victims of an unjust system.

Emilia Carr, 30 is the youngest woman in the country on death row. She shares a cell at Florida's Lowell Correctional Institution with Tiffany Cole, 33, who is the third youngest.

Both women were sexually abused when they were young. Both were convicted of separate murders they say they didn't do and both are fighting to have their death sentences converted to life sentences.

The pair spoke to US ABC's Diane Sawyer saying they are only on death row because they didn't have the money to buy their way out of their situations.

"How many rich people go to prison?" Carr said. "We're all minorities. We're all people who are either minorities or didn't have any, money — any way to say, 'Hey, let me buy my freedom', because it's not free in this country.

"Unfortunately, equality is an illusion," she said.

The women call it "life row" because they choose to focus on the fact that they aren't dead yet.

Jealousy ... Prosecutors say Emilia Carr, 30, killed her boyfriend's wife to be with him. Picture: Supplied Source: Supplied

Carr, a mother of four, was sentenced to die by lethal injection for the 2009 murder of Heather Strong — the wife of Carr's boyfriend, Joshua Fulgham.

Carr is said to have tricked Strong into a storage container where she placed a plastic bag over her head after unsuccessfully trying to break her neck. Strong eventually died of asphyxiation. Carr claims she left before the murder was committed.

"Wouldn't there have been physical evidence?" she told ABC. "I mean, duct tape is some sticky stuff, yet there's no finger prints, no DNA, no hair."

A jury decided 7-5 that she would be sentenced to death, ignoring her defence's evidence of her abuse as a child from her grandfather and father and the fact that her own father tried to have her killed.

Her co-accused, Fulgham, was sentenced to life in prison for his involvement.

Buried couple alive ... Tiffany Cole is 33. Picture: Supplied Source: Supplied

Cole was 26 when she was found guilty of kidnapping and killing her former neighbours Carol and Reggie Sumner.

Cole and three men robbed the couple, tied them up and buried them alive. Photos showed her and the co-defendents celebrating with champagne and handfuls of cash after the crime.

Cole says she helped dig the grave but claims she didn't know it was for the victims.

"I am not the same person anymore," Cole said. "I have peace, I have joy. I have a sound mind."

Both women have lodged appeals — a process that takes an average of 12 years.

Cole's prosecutor Jay Plotkin told ABC that he does not believe that she should be let off.

"I was a prosecutor for more than 20 years. There was not any case that I prosecuted where the crime was more vile or cruel than the torture and murder of the Sumners," he said. "This case lingers on in the heart and soul of our community."

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