Lisa Graham paid family friend to shoot her 20-year-old daughter dead

Lisa Graham, from Tennessee, has been sentenced to death for hiring family friend Kenny Walton to shoot her 20-year-old daughter dead in 2007

An Alabama mother who paid a family friend to shoot her daughter dead because she was an 'inconvenience' has been sentenced to death.

Lisa Graham, from Russell County, was convicted of ordering the death of her 20-year-old daughter Stephanie 'Shae' Graham back in March, but her sentencing was delayed for a medical report.

Today psychiatrists told Judge Jacob Walker III that, despite having an IQ of just 77, Graham was capable of understanding the consequences of her actions, and was eligible for capital punishment.

According to The Columbus Leger-Inquirer, medics noted that Graham was prone to bouts of depression and had a 'borderline personality disorder', but was not mentally unfit.

During her trial, the jury heard how Graham bitterly resented her daughter, constantly complaining to family and friends that the girl was a nuisance, and that she would like to kill her.

Prosecutors told how Graham hated her daughter because she was hooked on drugs, was working as a stripper and possibly a prostitute, and had dropped out of college.

Graham also believed that Shae was having an affair with her husband, as the two always took the same side in arguments which was driving their marriage apart.

In 2007 she was also charged with aggravated assault over a rive-by shooting, and Graham worried that she was going to flee the state, leaving her to pay a $100,000 bond.

In July of that year, Graham conspired to have her daughter killed by family worker and long-time friend Kenny Walton.

Graham (pictured at an earlier stage in proceedings) hated daughter Stephanie 'Shae' Graham because she was a drug user and stripper, the court heard, and often talked about having her killed

On July 7 she met Walton - who is now serving a life sentence having confessed to the killing - in a public library and gave him her pistol.

Walton found Shae at a gas station with friends, and on the pretense of giving her a vehicle to escape the state with, lured her into his truck.

He then drove to a dirt track off Highway 165, before Shae got out of the car to relieve herself.

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As she was squatting beside the truck, Walton pulled out the 9mm pistol and shot her six times, twice in the head, leaving her bullet-riddled body with her pants around her ankles.

Witnesses told police that Walton had left the gas station with her, and he quickly confessed to his part in the crime, also telling officers that Graham had paid him to do it.

When officers questioned Graham she claimed not to know where the pistol was, before her husband helpfully mentioned that an elderly neighbor was cleaning it.

Graham had in fact given it to the neighbor in secret to clean away evidence, but officers got there too soon, and were able to prove it was the murder weapon.

Graham (pictured in 2007 at the time of her arrest) also believed Shae was having an affair with her husband as the two always sided together in arguments, which was driving their marriage apart

Graham's initial trial was delayed for years because the Russell County was undergoing renovation and was deemed unfit to hear a murder trail.

Eventually the case got underway but had to be called off after Circuit Judge George Greene declared a mistrial in September 2012, saying his health was declining to rapidly to hear the case.

Greene was reported to have fallen asleep in court multiple times. He retired in December that year, and died just weeks later in January 2013.

Graham's lawyers attempted to get her case thrown out under double jeopardy rules, but the appeal was thrown out, and in March this year she was convicted of murder.

It took jurors just two hours of deliberations to find her guilty, and only a further hour to recommend the death penalty.

Sentencing was scheduled for May this year, but delayed so Graham's mental state could be examined.

Her lawyers have since lodged another appeal for a retrial, but for the time being Graham becomes Alabama's fifth woman on death row.

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