WWII Vet Killer Could Be 3rd Woman Executed by Pa.

Shonda Walter, convicted of killing a Lock Haven veteran of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, is nearing the end of a five-year legal process that could lead to her execution.

It would be only the third time in the state's history that a woman has been executed, and the first time a woman has been executed by lethal injection in Pennsylvania.

On Feb. 25, Gov. Ed Rendell signed a death warrant for her.

She is now scheduled to be executed Thursday, April 22.

“She is still in Muncy State Correctional Institution,” said Pennsylvania Department of Corrections spokeswoman Susan McNaughton.

Walter was convicted in 2005 of first-degree murder and sentenced to death for a brutal 2003 hatchet attack on her 83-year-old neighbor, James Sementelli.

When Lock Haven police discovered the body of Sementelli inside his home, they determined Sementelli had sustained over 60 wounds, 18 fractures and 45 bruises to various parts of his body, many of them to his head, face and neck.

Prosecutors said Walter killed Sementelli, a World War II veteran of the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor, so she could steal and sell his car to pay off court debts and gain entry into the Bloods street gang in Lock Haven.

Walter has exhausted the state appeal process for her conviction and death sentence in the slaying, and has approached the federal court for a review of her case.

Walter's conviction and sentence of death were affirmed by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on March 20, 2009.

For many inmates serving time on death row, the wait for a final determination is measured in years, sometimes decades.

But no woman has come as close as Walter in recent times. She is in the second stage of a three-phase death warrant process that could end at Pennsylvania's death chamber at Rockview State Correctional Institution in Centre County.