Virginia Executes Its First Woman Since 1912

There's no doubt about it: Teresa Lewis was guilty, convicted in 2002 of plotting to kill her husband and step-son over a $250,000 life insurance policy. Lewis confessed to the crime herself. And on Thursday, September 23rd, the Commonwealth of Virginia put her to death for it, the first woman executed by the state in nearly a century.

But while Lewis was unquestionably guilty, she was also repentant, pleading for forgiveness, namely from her step-daughter Kathy Clifton, soon after her arrest and throughout the years since her conviction.

"I don't think there's enough words to even begin to tell her how sorry I am," she said in a jailhouse interview with Richmond television station WTVR just days before here death. But "I want people to know that you can be a good person and make the wrong choice, I want people to know that."

"I want Kathy to know that I love her and I'm very sorry," she reiterated just minutes before receiving a lethal injection at Virginia's Greensville Correctional Center. She was pronounced dead at 9:13 p.m., according to The Washington Post.

"Tonight the machinery of death in Virginia extinguished the childlike and loving spirit of Teresa Lewis," said her lawyer, Jim Rocap.

Lewis' case spurred international outrage -- and an Op-Ed pleading her case from crime novelist John Grisham -- not just because of her repeated expressions of remorse, but because of her gender: the last woman executed in Virginia was a 17-year-old African-American girl by the name of Virginia Christian back in 1912. According to an article in the journal Criminal Justice Reform (pdf), Christian was a maid convicted of murdering her boss, a conviction that came as a lynch mob waited outside the courtroom.

But Lewis shared more than just gender with Christian: she was also said to be mentally challenged, registering an I.Q. of just 72 (if her I.Q. had been just two points lower she would have been spared execution), a fact which spurred a call for clemency (pdf) from the European Union.

Lewis also never actually killed anyone. (Read more after the jump.)

Though involved in the planning of her husband and step-son's murder, two other men -- Matthew Shallenberger and Robert Fuller -- pulled the trigger. And according to Lewis' lawyer, it was Shallenberger who took advantage of her mental challenges and actually orchestrated the plot. But the men who committed the murders were sentenced to life in prison; only Lewis -- whose fate was decided by a judge, not a jury -- was sentenced to death.

Virginia's Republican Governor Bob McDonnell, however, was unpersuaded by the facts of Lewis' case, declaring there to be absolutey "no compelling reasons" to set aside her sentence.

Lewis was the 108th person to be executed in Virginia since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976; more than 1,200 Americans have been put to death in total.

Photo Credit: Virginia Department of Corrections