The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation announced today that Cynthia Lynn Coffman, 62, will be executed by lethal injection at San Quentin State Prison, becoming the first woman put to death in the state since capital punishment was reinstated in 1977. Coffman, convicted in 1989 for the brutal murder of Corinna Novis and linked to three other killings during a five-week rampage across California and Arizona, has exhausted all appeals. The execution is scheduled for June 15, 2026, despite Governor Gavin Newsom’s 2019 moratorium on executions, which his office has now partially lifted for this case, citing the unique severity of Coffman’s crimes and the explicit wishes of the victims’ families.
Coffman’s path to the death chamber began in October 1986, when she and her co-defendant, James Gregory Marlow, abducted, tortured, and murdered 20-year-old Corinna Novis after luring her from a Redlands mall parking lot. Novis was strangled, sexually assaulted, and buried in a shallow grave in a Fontana vineyard. The same pair killed Sandra Neary, 32, in Costa Mesa; Pamela Simmons, 35, in Bullhead City, Arizona; and Lynell Murray, 19, in Huntington Beach over the span of just 35 days.
Each victim was chosen at random, cash withdrawn from their accounts, and their bodies discarded. Evidence at trial included Coffman’s fingerprints on Novis’s car, an earring belonging to Murray found in Coffman’s purse, and her own confession to a jailhouse informant that she told Novis, “We have to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 you because we can’t leave any witnesses,” and that the killing “made her feel really good.”
The courtroom in San Bernardino County fell silent on November 17, 1989, as Judge Michael A. Smith sentenced Coffman to death. At 28 years old, she became the first woman in California to receive a capital sentence since the modern death penalty law took effect.
Her co-defendant, Marlow, was also sentenced to death and remains on death row today. Coffman’s defense argued she was a battered woman who acted under the total control of Marlow, who had beaten her, threatened her son, and cut off her hair as punishment. Dr.
Lenore Walker, a leading expert on battered woman syndrome, testified that Coffman fit the clinical profile of a victim of coercive control. But the jury rejected that narrative, finding that Coffman’s active participation in the murders—including approaching victims, driving getaway cars, and using stolen credit cards—proved she was a willing accomplice, not a hostage.
Since her sentencing, Coffman has spent 36 years on death row at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla. Her appeals have been litigated through state and federal courts, with the U. S.
Supreme Court denying certiorari in 2023. In 2019, Governor Newsom ordered a moratorium on all executions, closed the execution chamber at San Quentin, and withdrew the state’s lethal injection protocol. But today, the governor’s office issued a statement saying the moratorium does not apply to Coffman’s case because the pain caused to the families of the four victims, and the “staggering” nature of her crimes, outweigh the general policy concerns.
“The state of California has a duty to carry out the sentence lawfully imposed by a jury and affirmed by the courts,” the statement read. “For Cynthia Coffman, that duty now demands action.”
The decision has ignited a fierce debate. Prosecutors and victims’ families applaud the move. Sandra Neary’s sister, Margaret Chen, said in a statement, “We have waited 40 years for this moment.
Sandra was a mother, a daughter, a friend. She was taken from us in a way that no human should endure. Now, finally, there will be accountability.”
But death penalty opponents, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the California Innocence Project, have condemned the partial lifting of the moratorium, calling it arbitrary and unconstitutional. “Governor Newsom is creating a dangerous precedent by picking and choosing who dies,” said ACLU attorney Rebecca Lee. “Coffman’s case is horrifying, but the state’s execution machinery is broken.
Executing one woman won’t bring back the victims, and it will only deepen the injustice of a system that has been proven to be flawed.”
Legal experts note that Coffman’s execution, if carried out, would mark a dramatic return to capital punishment in California, which has not executed anyone since 2006, when Clarence Ray Allen was put to death. The state’s death row population has dwindled to 673, with most inmates dying of natural causes or having their sentences commuted. Coffman’s case is unique not only because of her gender but because of the brutality of the spree.
The four women she helped 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 did not know each other. They were strangers, chosen at the whim of two methamphetamine-addicted drifters who needed money for drugs. The evidence shows that after murdering Novis, Coffman and Marlow used her bank card to try to withdraw cash, then pawned her typewriter and answering machine for more meth.
After killing Murray, they ate dinner at a Denny’s using her stolen credit card.
Coffman’s own background is a study in tragedy. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1962, she suffered a double hernia as an infant, disrupting the bonding process with her mother.
She was raised by a stepfather who showed her warmth, but by high school, she was running away, using drugs, and pregnant at 18. She married an abusive man, left him, and moved to Arizona, where she began selling meth. There she met James Marlow, a man with a violent criminal record and a childhood so dark that his own mother injected him with heroin at age 15.
Within months, Coffman was beaten, tattooed with “Property of Folsom Wolf,” and dragged into a killing spree that she later claimed she could not escape. Yet prosecutors presented evidence that she showed no signs of coercion after the murders: she was seen embracing Marlow, laughing, and spending money freely.
The question of whether Coffman was a victim or a predator has haunted her case for decades. At her trial, a jailhouse informant testified that Coffman said she felt “good” after killing Novis. A sheriff’s deputy testified that he saw Coffman and Marlow having an intimate conversation through jail bars after their arrest, undermining her claim of fear.
But her defense attorneys pointed to the cycle of violence: Marlow had threatened to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 her son, Joshua, if she left. He had stabbed her, cut off her hair, and isolated her from her family. In the end, the jury decided that even if she was abused, she was also a killer.
The California Supreme Court upheld her death sentence in 1995, and federal courts denied relief in 2012 and 2020.
Now, with the execution date set, Coffman’s legal team is scrambling to file emergency motions. Attorney David Lynch, who has represented her for 15 years, said, “The governor’s decision is a betrayal of the moratorium’s entire purpose. Cynthia Coffman is not the same person she was in 1986.
She has spent nearly four decades in solitary confinement, has been a model inmate, and has expressed profound remorse. Executing her does not serve justice. It serves revenge.”
The state’s response is that the jury’s verdict must be honored. The victims’ families have waited long enough. “Coffman had her day in court, and she was found guilty of capital murder with special circumstances,” said San Bernardino County District Attorney Jason Anderson.
“The evidence was overwhelming. She tortured and killed a young woman who trusted her. There is no redemption for that.”
The practical logistics of the execution remain uncertain. California’s lethal injection protocol was withdrawn in 2019, and the state has no current supply of the drugs used in capital punishment. The Department of Corrections has stated that it will contract with a compounding pharmacy to obtain pentobarbital, the sole 𝒹𝓇𝓊𝑔 used in previous executions.
Opponents argue that this could lead to botched executions, as has happened in other states. The state insists that the protocol will be humane and constitutional. Coffman is currently housed in a single cell on death row, allowed one hour of outdoor exercise daily.
She has not granted interviews for years, but letters she wrote to her family during appeals have been made public. In one, she wrote, “I am sorry for the pain I caused. I cannot undo what I did.
I can only try to be a better person every day.”
The execution of Cynthia Coffman will be a historic event. Only 16 women have been executed in the United States since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, and none in California. The last woman executed in the state was Elizabeth Ann Duncan in 1962, who was put to death in the gas chamber for hiring a hitman to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 her daughter-in-law.
Coffman’s case, however, is different: she was not a mastermind but a follower, a woman who walked into a killing spree and never walked out. The execution also raises the question of whether the state is selectively enforcing the death penalty. Since 1978, California has sentenced 13 women to death, but none have been executed.
Coffman will be the first.
As the date approaches, the families of the victims prepare for a final closure. Lynell Murray’s mother, now in her 80s, told reporters that she has attended every parole hearing and every appeal. “I want to see her die,” she said.
“I want to know that the same woman who strangled my daughter will never breathe another breath of free air. That is the only justice I will ever get.” Corinna Novis’s father, who died in 2019, never saw the execution.
His daughter’s friend, who was supposed to meet her for pizza the night she was abducted, still carries the guilt of having been late. “If I had been there on time, maybe she would have already left the mall,” she said in an interview. “But I wasn’t.
And now, 40 years later, the state is finally going to do what the jury said it should.”
The execution will take place at San Quentin’s execution chamber, a room that has been closed since 2019. The state has been quietly preparing it for the last six months, installing new equipment and training staff. Witnesses will include the victims’ families, media representatives, and members of Coffman’s legal team.
Coffman has requested a final meal of her choice, which the prison has not disclosed. She has also started a spiritual adviser, a Catholic priest, who has visited her weekly. In her final statement, which she has written but not released, she is expected to apologize to the victims’ families.
Whether that apology will be accepted is another matter.
The broader implications of this execution are immense. California’s death penalty moratorium was a major policy achievement for Governor Newsom, who has called the death penalty “a failure of government.” By lifting it for Coffman, he risks alienating his progressive base while satisfying victims’ rights advocates.
But the governor’s office has framed the decision as a narrow exception, not a reversal. “This case is extraordinary,” said a spokesperson. “The crimes were committed over a defined period, the evidence was overwhelming, and the sentence was affirmed by every court.
The governor believes that in this unique instance, the state must fulfill its obligation.”
News of the execution has sparked protests outside San Quentin. Dozens of death penalty abolitionists gathered this morning, holding signs that read “Stop the Killing” and “No Execution is Just.” Inside the prison, Coffman’s routine continues.
She eats breakfast, reads books from the prison library, and writes letters. She has been on death row longer than some of the guards have been alive. The execution date, June 15, will mark the end of a 36-year wait.
For the families of Sandra Neary, Pamela Simmons, Corinna Novis, and Lynell Murray, it will mark the end of a 40-year nightmare. For the state of California, it will mark a return to a practice that many thought was abandoned.
The question that remains unanswered is whether Cynthia Coffman’s execution will bring any closure or whether it will simply be another chapter in a story that has no ending. The four women she killed are gone forever. Their families have lived with that loss every day.
Coffman will die by lethal injection, surrounded by a few witnesses, in a state that has not executed anyone in 20 years. The debate over capital punishment will continue, but for now, the state has decided that Cynthia Coffman must die. The execution is scheduled to proceed as planned.
The world will be watching.