Should the death penalty be applied equally to men and women?

Imagine that your parents are lying in bed when suddenly a woman bursts into their bedroom and hacks away at them with a pickax till they are dead. She is caught by police and given a fair trial. She is found guilty of murder and sentenced to death by lethal injection. Fourteen years later, as the day of execution approaches for this woman, she requests an appeal. Because she is a woman, her case suddenly becomes highly publicized. Meanwhile hundreds of other men appeal their deaths and nobody ever hears their story.
Karla Fay Tucker killed two people with a pickax on June 13, 1983. She was found guilty and sentenced to death by lethal injection. Fourteen years later she appealed and her case became the center of controversy because a woman had not been executed since the Civil War.
The fact that she is a woman does not change the fact that she killed a person. Even though her appeal was not based on her sex, her sex became the center of the medias attention. This woman...