20 January 2012 :

Pomona Superior Court Judge Robert Martinez sentenced Manling Tsang Williams, 32, Asiatic, to death Thursday for smothering her two sons Devon, 7, and Ian, 3, with a pillow and slashing her husband Neal Williams, 27, to death with a sword on Aug. 7, 2007. A jury convicted Manling Williams of three counts of first-degree murder in 2010, along with the special allegations of using weapons and lying in wait. After one jury was unable to agree on whether to sentence her to death or life imprisonment, a second penalty phase jury recommended last year that she be put to death (see Aug. 9, 2011). Judge Martinez followed that recommendation. Defense attorneys acknowledged that his client had had an extra-marital affair, but disputed the prosecution's assertion that the affair formed a motive for the crime. Out of more than 700 California death row inmates, fewer than two dozen of them are women, and none has been among the 13 prisoners executed since the death penalty was restored in 1976. Female condemned inmates are housed in a maximum-security unit at Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla.