First woman on death row in 100 years in Virginia to die today

Teresa Lewis is expected to die today by lethal injection and be the first woman to be put to death in Virginia since 17-year old Virginia Christian was killed by the electric chair in 1912.

Death penalty protestors said that Lewis’s case is an example of the flaws of capital punishment, arguing that she has diminished mental faculties and was taken advantage of by smarter collaborators. However, an IQ test revealed a score of 70 or above, making Lewis fit for trial.

Lewis, 41, pleaded guilty to hiring two men in 2002 to murder her husband and stepson for their $350,000 life insurance policy.
State Governor Bob McDonnell said he will not intervene to stop the execution, removing any chance of a reprieve.

Lewis reportedly met hit men Rodney Fuller, 19, and Matthew Shallenberger, 22. She began an affair with Shallenberger and encouraged her 16-year old daughter to get together with Fuller.

She admitted to having left the trailer door open in Pittsylvania County so the accomplices could enter and shoot her husband and his 25-year old son.

All three pleaded guilty. The hit men got life in prison but Lewis, who was deemed fit to stand trial, was sentenced to death as the mastermind of the killings.

Lewis's supporters question why she should be executed when the two men who actually carried out the murder were handed life without parole.

The key piece of evidence they wanted was a letter from Shallenberger, who killed himself in jail in 2006, in which he claims full responsibility for the murder plot and suggests he pushed Lewis into it.

"From the moment I met her I knew she was someone who could be easily manipulated," he allegedly wrote. "Killing Julian and Charles Lewis was entirely my idea. I needed money, and Teresa was an easy target."

Lewis’s case made global headlines this week when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad contrasted the lack of opposition to her impending execution to the "storm" surrounding a woman sentenced to be stoned in Iran.

"A woman is being executed in the United States for murder but nobody protests against it," he said in the United States on Monday, according to Iran's official news agency.

Iran has been under international pressure to spare the life of 43-year-old mother Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, who was sentenced to death by stoning for adultery in 2006.

Lewis will become only the 12th woman to be executed in the United States since the death penalty was reintroduced in 1976. In that time 1,215 people have been executed.