Also known as Juanita or Josefa Loaiza, Josefa Segovia was a Mexican-American woman executed by hanging in Downieville, California, on July 5, 1851, after being found guilty of murdering a local miner, Frederick Cannon. She is known as the first and only woman hanged in California. Little is known about her early life, and her birth date is unknown. Her actual name has long been debated among historians and scholars: before the Chicano Civil Rights Movement, most scholars said she had no recorded last name; Gordon Young's Days of 49 gave her name as Juanita; Hubert Bancroft referred to her as either The Mexican or the little woman and used Juanita in his account of her trial; historian Rodolpho F. Acuna identified her as Juana Loaiza based on an 1877 Schedule of Mexican Claims Against the United States listing a Jose Maria Loiza seeking damages for the lynching of his wife, though that name does not appear in the 1850 census, suggesting the claim may have been fraudulent; and in 1976 Martha Cotera informed Chicano scholars that her last name was Segovia.