woman to be executed in virginia

Sept. execution set for only woman on Virginia death row


Posted to: Crime News Virginia

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Teresa Lewis, 41, offered herself and her 16-year-old daughter for sex to two men who committed the killings.


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• DATABASE: Executions in Virginia - Nov. 11, 2009
  

The Associated Press
© July 29, 2010

RICHMOND
A Virginia woman who used sex and money to persuade two men to kill her husband and her stepson to collect a $250,000 life insurance policy was scheduled Thursday to be executed in two months, which would be the first U.S. execution of a woman in five years.
A judge set a Sept. 23 execution date for Teresa Lewis, 41, the only woman on Virginia's death row. She would be the first woman executed in the state in nearly a century.
Lewis offered herself and her 16-year-old daughter for sex to two men who committed the killings. She provided money to buy the murder weapons and stood by while they shot her husband, Julian Clifton Lewis Jr., 51, and stepson Charles J. Lewis, 25, in 2002 in Pittsylvania County in south-central Virginia.
Lewis rummaged through her husband's pockets for money while he lay dying and waited nearly an hour before calling 911.
The gunmen, Rodney Fuller and Matthew Shallenberger, were sentenced to life in prison. Shallenberger committed suicide in prison in 2006.
Lewis' daughter, Christie Lynn Bean, served five years because she knew about the plan but remained silent.
Lewis would be the first woman executed in the U.S. since Frances Newton died by injection in Texas. Newton shot her husband and two young children to death to collect insurance money.
Lewis would also be the first woman executed in Virginia since 1912, when 17-year-old Virginia Christian died in the electric chair for suffocating her employer.
Women commit about 12 percent of the murders in the U.S. annually, and few ever reach the execution chamber.
Out of more than 1,200 executions since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976, only 11 women have been executed. Of the more than 3,200 inmates on death row nationwide, 53 are women.
Women usually don't commit torture murders, they aren't serial killers and often don't have a history of other violent crimes compared with men who get sentenced to death, said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. They also typically kill someone they know.
"I think it's those facts, rather than just gender that make the difference," he said.
Lewis' first attempt to kill her husband failed. The plan was for the men to kill her husband as he came home from work and make it look like a robbery, but a car was too close and foiled the plot. A few days later she found out her stepson was coming home on leave from Army National Guard duty, and they decided to wait and kill him, too, so they could get all the insurance money.
Lewis' attorney, James Rocap III, did not immediately return a call seeking comment. He has said he would appeal her case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Lewis pleaded guilty to capital murder, allowing a judge to determine her sentence. Her attorneys believed she stood a better chance of getting a life prison term from the judge who had never sentenced anyone to death, than from a jury.
In a 2004 interview with The Associated Press, Lewis said she hired the hitmen to escape an abusive relationship. She said she and Shallenberger became lovers and concocted the scheme to murder her husband, who she said was an abusive alcoholic.
In a hearing before the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in March, Rocap argued that Lewis was too dependent on other people and prescription drugs to have plotted the murders. He said the trial lawyers' failure to raise dependency disorder and drug addiction as mitigating factors at sentencing violated Lewis' constitutional right to effective assistance of counsel.
However, the appeals court said there was conflicting expert testimony on those issues and plenty of evidence supporting the prosecution's portrayal of Lewis as a cold, cunning person who used sex and money to enlist others in a scheme to kill for money.http://hamptonroads.com/2010/07/sept-execution-set-only-woman-virginia-death-row?cid=rltd

Does anyone feel differently about capital punishment when the person to be executed is a woman?
Is it appropriate that the two hit men received a life sentence and the woman that hired them is to die for the crime?

Not really. I do wonder why they received life...what were their mitigating factors?

Not at all

I think that anyone who has done what she did should be allegeable

But I got to ask, what’s the daughter look like and were these guys so desperate that they would kill just because they got laid.



I agree with Ziggy, given the circumstances I think the hit men should have gotten the death penalty as well

http://caselaw.findlaw.com/va-supreme-court/1138688.html
This contains a pretty detailed description of the crime.

Fantastic...another CASE to read...like I read 30 or so a week for school Blech!!!! LOL. I would like to read it, but since I'm not concerned with her sentence all that much then the state of VA can go forward and uphold their current laws.

I'll summarize.
Teresa Lewis hired two men, Rodney Fuller and Matthew Shallenberger, to kill her husband and her stepson in order to collect a $250,000 life insurance policy. The policy was on her stepson. He listed his father as the primary beneficary and Ms. Lewis [stepmom] as the secondary beneficary. It was therefore necessary that both of them die for her to collect the money.
She also attempted to take money from a trust account by forging her husbands signature but that only goes to character and is not really realvent to the murders.
Teresa had sex with them men and allowed at least one of the men to have sex with her minor daughter. She also gave them $1200 to purchase firearms to commit the murders.
She then left the back door to the house open so that the hit men could come in easily. She was sleeping in bed with her husband. They walked in, woke her up, and she went into the kitchen where she waited while the men shot her husband and stepson. Teresa then went into the bedroom where her husband was dying, took his wallet out of his pants pockets and returned to the kitchen. While they were going through the wallet the man who was shooting the stepson came into the kitchen and said "he just won't die" so the other assassin went in and shot him a few more time.
The men left and Teresa waited about 45 min for her husband to die before calling for help. She did not wait long enough. He was still alive when a sheriff deputy responded to the scene. The deputy asked him if he knew who had shot him. His final words were “My wife knows who done this to me.”
From the report.
"Julian Lewis suffered shotgun wounds to the upper left arm, shoulder, abdomen, pelvis, penis, thighs, legs, arms, and chest.   The bullets destroyed or removed large areas of tissue in his upper arm, shoulder, and upper chest.   The bullets also fractured several ribs.   Plastic wadding from a shotgun shell was lodged in his left lung tissue.   Julian Lewis eventually died from extensive blood loss."
I suspect they used a light game load in the shotguns rather than a heavier load like a buck shot. Both men were shot many times and took a long time to die. The presence of plastic wadding in the lung tells me it was a very close, perhaps nearly contact wound.
The stepson died of 8 gunshot wounds.
After multiple interviews with investigators Teresa confessed. Informaiton she provided led them to the two shooters. The weapons and gloves with physical evidence were recovered.
Teresa's attorney eleceted to be sentenced by a judge rather than a jury. She plead guilty and asked the court for mercy. Attorneys argued that she was addicted to drugs at the time as a mitigating factor. She was expecting a life sentence. The judge sentenced her to die. She appealed claiming inadaquate council. Appealate court determined that given the circumstances that arguing mitigating factors and pleading for mercy from the court was a sound legal defense and hindsight alone is not a reason for appeal.
Why did the shooters receive life? Who knows? It is simply a case of the disportionate application of the death penalty. In reality it comes down to a jury or in this case a judge determining what is the most appropriate sentence.

Roll the dice...and sometimes you lose. Game over Teresa. Guess he thought the judge wouldn't give a death sentence that a jury surely would given the cold and calculating actions of Teresa. Wrong. VA is a tough place for murderers huh?

I guess maybe the two guys were thought to be mentally challenged - a mitigating factor...afterall they killed with sex as payment - which is pretty, pardon my political incorrectness - retarded.

I think, from what I have read of the events, that Teresa surrounded herself with people who had some sort of diminished capacity. The clumsy way they stumbled through the crime and the fact that they needed her to front them some money because they lacked the reasources to obtain a gun without it all kind of point to that. They are accountable for their actions. One already died and the other will die in prison.
She is different though. She set the events in motion. It all happened according to her design.

Which is probably why when the scene was "here come d'judge" he "socked it to her". Name that show?
Yes, the evil mastermind should pay a higher price perhaps than the bumbling henchmen.

http://hamptonroads.com/2010/09/minister-norfolk-ties-fights-halt-historic-execution?cid=srch

Though I do not think we as a society need to be executing anyone, I find the reasoning in this article to be morally bankrupt. If Teresa was a devote Hindu would the same group be appealing for mercy? Are we to weigh the punishement by the specific faith or lack there of of the convicted?

The argument makes no sense. In fact, I would argue the opposite on a Christian basis. She has been forgiven, she is ready to go home. Her sould has been saved so that she will go to Heaven. If she were Hindu, the Christians should be asking to keep her alive only so thay can minister to her and save her before she is put to death. People who are born again don't deserve to be spared being dealt their punishment for their deed. Remorse only counts for parole.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2017362,00.html

The case made Time.
Reading the comments is in some ways better than the original article. There is quite a variety. In my non scientific opinion I think more people have a problem with this becuase she is a woman. There are more voices for life and fewer screaming "fry the bastard". I think people do feel as good about killing someones grandma.

Woman or not......does not matter. She did not kill her husband and stepson, true. She was just as guilty as her murder for hire guys. She just did not have the guts to pull the trigger. ~Sighs~

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/teresa-lewis-looked-frightened-entered-death-chamber/story?id=11718082

Teresa Lewis was executed last night. Did she deserve to die? I don't know. We could argue that indefinitely I suppose. What would be the point. Is Virginia safer today than it was last week?

Well, she did do it and it was pretty cold - and she took two lives so I think it's fair that she forfeit hers. I don't think the DP is used to make a community safer; it's punitive.

ziggy wrote:Well, she did do it and it was pretty cold - and she took two lives so I think it's fair that she forfeit hers. I don't think the DP is used to make a community safer; it's punitive.

I know.
And she has been punished.

This is crazy to me.Again where do you draw the line?
She received the death penalty for being the mastermind.
If the guys would have failed to kill them should she still have gotten the death penalty?
If not why not? (this is directed at people agreeing with the death penalty)

Because she set in motion the very acts that lead to the deaths and so she is the actual cause. I think the other guys should have also received an equal punishment, however they needed them to drop the dime on her probably.

If there were no deaths then it would only be attempted murder and no I don't think she should get the death penalty because although she tried she was not able to deprive someone of their life. When she did cause two people to be deprived of the right to live, then she gave up hers.

I don't get it.Had they not died her part in the crime would still be exactly the same.

No it would not be because it had a different result. When you mastermind something that is carried to fruition, you are responsible for the RESULTS as well as the planning but she can't get attempted murder along with murder because it's a lesser included and merges into murder.

You don't think that the fact that her plan was carried out and two people died matters?

Legally it is an easy question. Morally the line gets a little grayer. Still, talking about somethig is not the same as doing something. Planning something is not the same as doing something. We all make choices. Ultimately we are responible for what we do, not what we want to do.