US executes first woman for five years

Teresa Lewis, a grandmother who had become a symbol for campaigners against the death penalty, has been executed in Virginia.

By Nick Allen in Los Angeles
Published: 2:47AM BST 24 Sep 2010

Hopes for an 11th-hour reprieve came to nothing and Lewis died by lethal injection at 9.13pm (2.13am GMT) in Greensville prison.

The 41-year-old was the first woman to be executed in the United States since 2005, and the first in Virginia for almost 100 years.

She was only the 12th woman executed in the US since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1996.

Lewis had an IQ of only 72 but was considered fit for trial in Virginia.

She pleaded guilty to hiring two men in 2002 to murder her husband and stepson to cash in on their life insurance policy. Relatives of her victims witnessed the execution.

Death penalty abolitionists had championed Lewis's case, insisting she had diminished mental faculties.

Outside the prison Jack Payden-Travers, a member of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, said the execution was "nothing more than a legal lynching."

Before her death Lewis ate a final meal which included two breasts of fried chicken, sweet peas with butter, and Dr Pepper to drink.

She was visited by family members including her son, Billy Bean, 20, and her lawyers.

Her final hope for a last-minute stay of execution had rested with Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, but he did not intervene.

Shortly before the execution Council of Europe goodwill ambassador Bianca Jagger had urged Gov McDonnell to halt it.

She said: "It is not too late. If Teresa Lewis is executed tonight in this questionable case it will be a gross miscarriage of justice, a lasting shame on the American legal system." The US Supreme Court had turned down an appeal for a stay on Tuesday.

Speaking before the execution Lewis's lawyer James Rocap said she had a "remarkable, spiritual peace about her." He said: "Teresa Lewis is a poster child for why the death penalty process is broken."

Lewis's crime took place in October 2002. She left the door of the family trailer in rural Pittsylvania County open so two young male accomplices could enter and shoot her husband and his 25-year-old son.

The two gunmen Rodney Fuller and Matthew Shallenberger, who she had met in a supermarket, also pleaded guilty. They were given life in jail but Lewis was sentenced to death because she was the "mastermind" of the killings.

Lewis had begun an affair with the 22-year-old Shallenberger and her lawyers claimed she was manipulated by him.

Before he killed himself in jail in 2006 Shallenberger wrote a letter in which he claimed full responsibility for the murder plot.

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/8021995/US-executes-first-woman-for-five-years.html