Virginia ready to execute Teresa Lewis

Supporters of Teresa Lewis say sentence is unfair

Depending on whom you ask, Teresa Lewis either deserves to be executed Thursday for masterminding the shootings of her husband and stepson or should be spared because she was duped into the killing scheme and repented long ago.

The 41-year-old Virginia woman is scheduled to die by injection at 9 p.m. Thursday at Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt, unless the U.S. Supreme Court intervenes. She would be the 1st woman executed in Virginia in nearly a century and the 1st in the U.S. in 5 years.

Of more than 1,200 executions since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976, only 11 women have been executed, according to the Washington-based Death Penalty Information Center. Of the more than 3,200 inmates on death row nationwide, 53 are women.

Lewis pleaded guilty in May 2003 to 2 counts of capital murder for hire in the October 2002 deaths of her husband, Julian Lewis, and her stepson, Charles Lewis.

On Friday, Gov. Bob McDonnell said he saw no "compelling reason" to stop the execution though more than 6,000 supporters have urged him to commute the sentence to life.

Perhaps Lewis' faith has brought her an outpouring of support rarely seen for condemned inmates in Virginia, home to the nation's 2nd-busiest execution chamber. Or could it be her gender in a country where a woman hasn't been executed in years?

A website in support of Lewis features testimonials from former prison chaplains and inmates telling how Lewis has comforted and inspired other inmates with her faith and her singing hymns and country gospel tunes that filled her wing at the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women.

But there are critics who point to prosecutors' details of the case to support their arguments: the promise of money to persuade 2 young men to do the killing, taking her teenage daughter to have sex with 1 of them, rifling through her dying husband's pockets for his last dollar, and then waiting until she thought he was dead before calling for help.

Lewis doesn't want to die but says her Christian faith will bring her peace if she goes.

"No I don't want to die this way or actually die at all!" she wrote in testimony read aloud for a prison church service last month she couldn't attend. "I feel I still have a lot of people to meet and to minister to."

The Rev. Lynn Litchfield met Lewis the day she arrived at Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women.

Backers see Lewis as a lost soul worth saving, a mentally challenged woman who has remorse.

"She has never said 'I didn't do this, I don't deserve the death penalty,'" Litchfield said. "She said 'I did it and I wish I hadn't.'"

Lewis met Julian Clifton Lewis Jr. at a Danville textile factory where they worked in 2000. Later they married. His older son subsequently died in a car accident, and he collected $200,000 from his life insurance policy.

In 2002, Julian's son Charles entered the U.S. Army Reserve, and when he was called for active duty he bought a $250,000 life insurance policy, naming his father as beneficiary.

Around the same time, Teresa Lewis met Matthew Shallenberger and Rodney Fuller.

Lewis began an affair with Shallenberger, and authorities say the 2 planned to kill her husband to collect the insurance money.

They later decided to kill both Julian and Charles, who was coming home on leave, records show. At one point, authorities say Lewis brought along her 16-year-old daughter to have sex with the then 19-year-old Fuller in a parking lot. The daughter had never met Fuller before.

On the night before Halloween in 2002, Lewis packed her husband's lunch for the next day and included a note, "I miss you when you're gone." She highlighted it with a smiley-face drawing.

She then prayed with her husband and they went to bed. Later that night, she got up, unlocked the back door, putting their pit bull out of the way in another bedroom.

Shallenberger and Fuller came in and shot both men several times. As her husband lay bleeding, Lewis went through his pants and wallet and gave the men the $300 inside.

After waiting about 45 minutes, Lewis called authorities to report 2 intruders had killed her husband and stepson. But when police arrived, Julian was still alive and told them "My wife knows who done this to me."

Lewis confessed days later, leading police to Shallenberger and Fuller. In May 2003, Lewis pleaded guilty, thinking the judge would show her mercy. Instead, she received the death penalty. Shallenberger and Fuller got life.

Shallenberger later claimed he was the leader in the scheme. But when it came time to sign an affidavit, he peeled away the pieces of paper he had initialed and ate them, said Lewis' attorney, James E. Rocap III. Shallenberger committed suicide in prison in 2006.

"It makes no sense on any level for Teresa to receive a death sentence when the person who was the principal motivator in this, admittedly, received life," Rocap said.

Rocap and other claims Lewis lacked the skills to plan and execute such a plot. They claim she was too dependent on prescription drugs and that her IQ puts her at the cusp of mental retardation, for which execution is banned.

"Our world is not going to be any safer if Teresa is executed," said Litchfield, the minister. "Nothing is going to be any better for the victims and their families."

Julian's daughter, Kathy Clifton, disagrees.

"These people who say that Teresa's life should be spared because she's found faith in prison after all this, it's kind of like saying just because you did something and said you're sorry that you shouldn't be punished," she said. She plans to attend the execution.

Soon, Lewis is to be moved to a holding cell down the hall from the death chamber. There will be no other inmates there to hear her singing, but her supporters don't think that will stop her.

Her favorite song: "I Need a Miracle."

Online: www.saveteresalewis.org

Source: News Leader, September 20, 2010