http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2010/09/15/leading-up-to-execution-virginia-woman-asks-for-clemency-tests/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+wsj/law/feed+(WSJ.com:+Law+Blog)
SEPTEMBER 15, 2010, 3:54 PM ET
By Ashby Jones
The death-penalty debate never ends; it just moves to another jurisdiction.
A few months ago, all eyes were on the situation with Ronnie Lee Gardner, a Utah man who chose to be executed by firing squad (and ultimately was).
The spotlight has since swung to the case of Teresa Lewis (pictured), a Pittsylvania County, Virginia woman set to die by lethal injection next week. Quick web searches turn up all kinds of news and information about Lewis. But newcomers to the saga could do worse than read this Time article to get up to speed.
As is characteristic in death-penalty cases, the facts are ugly. The lead paragraph from Time writers Katy Steinmetz and Alex Altman sets the stage well:
After midnight on Oct. 30, 2002, two men crept into an unlocked trailer in Pittsylvania County, Virginia. A family of three was sleeping. Toting shotguns, the intruders roused Teresa Lewis, now 40, and told her to leave the bedroom she shared with her husband Julian. One of the men shot Julian several times. The other intruder stalked down the hall and put five bullets into Julian’s son, C.J., a U.S. Army reservist. The intruders divvied up the cash in Julian’s wallet and fled the trailer. About 45 minutes later, Teresa Lewis called the police to report that her husband and stepson had been killed. But when the police arrived, Julian Lewis was still alive. Among his last words was an ominous accusation: “My wife knows who done this to me.”
She did. As detailed in court documents, Teresa Lewis had paid the shooters — Matthew Shallenberger, 22, and Rodney Fuller, 19 — to kill her husband and stepson.
Lewis wound up pleading guilty in 2003, and the judge on the case sentenced her to die by lethal injection.
As the eleventh-hour ticks away, the debate has turned to whether Lewis is mentally competent. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the execution of mentally incompetent people violates the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
So far, Lewis has scored badly on IQ tests — scoring as low as 70 in one — but she never tested in the range that would have deemed her mentally incompetent. (Her lawyers also claim she was addicted to prescription painkillers and suffered from a personality disorder.)
Her lawyers have asked Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell to commuter her sentence. And on Wednesday, the Arc of Virginia, a group that advocates for the mentally disabled, joined in, asking for time to at least give Lewis a full psychological evaluation, something that he says hasn’t yet been done.
Her execution is set for Sept. 23.
