Robin Lee Row

Victims

3 convictions, on three counts of first-degree murder and one of aggravated arson

Years active

February 10, 1992

Location

Boise, Ada County, Idaho, USA

Method

Carbon monoxide poisoning

Status

Convicted by an Ada County jury in March 1993 of three counts of first-degree murder and one of aggravated arson, and sentenced to death on December 16, 1993. The Supreme Court of Idaho affirmed the conviction and sentence in State v. Row, 131 Idaho 303 (1998). She has since filed five petitions for post-conviction relief and two federal habeas corpus claims, all unsuccessful, and on September 4, 2025 the Supreme Court of Idaho unanimously rejected her latest appeal, holding that her claim of ineffective trial counsel was time-barred because it had not been raised in her first post-conviction petition. That claim rested on brain scans taken before the killings which showed cognitive impairment and which her trial lawyers never put before the jury; her present counsel told the court the claim had been considered meritorious in federal court. She is the only woman under sentence of death in Idaho and is held at the state women’s prison at Pocatello, apart from the men on death row at the maximum security prison south of Boise. Executions in Idaho are paused while the state rebuilds its execution chamber: a law signed in March 2025 makes Idaho the only state to use the firing squad as its primary method, taking effect in July 2026.

Row was born on September 12, 1957. She had a history of insurance claims following deaths and fires: two earlier children had died in circumstances she claimed on, and a house fire had produced a payment.

On February 10, 1992 she set a fire at the family home in Boise, Idaho, having disabled the smoke detectors. Her husband Randy Row, thirty-four, and her children Joshua, ten, and Tabitha, eight, died of carbon monoxide poisoning. She was elsewhere, with an alibi arranged.

The three who died were her husband Randy Row, thirty-four, and her children from an earlier marriage, Joshua Cornellier, ten, and Tabitha Cornellier, eight.

She had taken out life insurance on all three shortly before and had made arrangements to collect.

She was convicted of three counts of first degree murder and sentenced to death on December 16, 1993. The judge, not a jury, imposed the sentence, which was the Idaho procedure at the time; that procedure was later held unconstitutional in Ring v. Arizona, and her sentence has been litigated on that basis without being overturned.

She remains on Idaho's death row, the only woman there, more than thirty years after sentence. Idaho has carried out one execution since 1994.