Teresa Lewis is Executed; What Made Her Case So Interesting?

Latest News Update About Teresa Lewis:

Teresa Lewis

Teresa Lewis, the woman who plotted to kill her husband and stepson for insurance money back in 2002, Thursday night was executed Thursday night by lethal injection in Jarratt, Va. Click here for the Washington Post story; here for the Richmond Times-Dispatch story. Click here, here, and here for previous LB posts on Lewis during the runup to her execution date.
Wearing a light blue prison-issued shirt and dark blue pants, Lewis looked anxious as she was led by officers into the death chamber at 8:55 p.m. She was placed on a white gurney, with leather straps securing her ankles, legs, wrists and chest, before intravenous lines were attached to each arm.

Lewis asked whether Kathy Clifton, the daughter and sister of her victims, was in the chamber.

“I just want Kathy to know that I love you, and I’m very sorry,” Lewis said before the drugs were pumped into her arms. Her feet, clad in flip-flops, twitched, but no other movement was visible. Her spiritual adviser, Julie Perry, cried as she stood in the back of the witness room.

Lewis was pronounced dead at 9:13 p.m.

Glom notes that Lewis’s case generated interest across the world. The European Union asked Virginia Gov. Robert McDonnell to commute her sentence to life, citing her mental capacity. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad cited the case at an appearance in New York.

Lewis is the 12th woman to be executed in the United States since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976.
Her final meal: fried chicken, sweet peas with butter, German chocolate cake and Dr Pepper, corrections officials said.
A question: People are executed in this country fairly regularly; it takes special circumstances to garner worldwide media attention (like asking to be executed by a firing squad).

So what was noteworthy about the Lewis execution? For starters, there was the issue of her mental capacity. Her supporters (and others) condemned the execution on grounds that her mental capacity fell below the Supreme Court’s permissible threshold.

Lewis, 41, died by injection at 9:13 p.m. Thursday at the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt, Va., according to The Associated Press.
Lewis’ final words were a message for the daughter of the husband she had killed.
“I just want Kathy to know that I love her, and I’m very sorry,” she said.
Her death brought an end to the debate over whether Lewis deserved to die, with supporters saying she was borderline mentally retarded, despite the prosecution’s claim that she was the mastermind of her husband’s and stepson’s murders. Read More.