JARRATT, Va. – The first woman executed in the United States in five years was put to death in Virginia on Thursday for arranging the killings of her husband and a stepson over a $250,000 insurance payment.

Teresa Lewis, 41, died by injection at 9:13 p.m., authorities said. She became the first woman executed in Virginia in nearly a century. Supporters and relatives of the victims watched her execution at Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt.

Lewis enticed two men through sex, cash and a promised cut in an insurance policy to shoot her husband, Julian Clifton Lewis Jr., and his son, Charles, as they were sleeping in the couple’s mobile home in October 2002. Both triggermen were sentenced to life in prison, and one committed suicide in 2006.

Lewis appeared tearful, her jaw clenched, as she was escorted into the death chamber. She glanced tensely around at the 14 assembled corrections officials before being bound to a gurney with heavy leather straps.

In the moments before her execution, Lewis asked if her husband’s daughter was there.

Kathy Clifton, Lewis’ stepdaughter, was in an adjacent witness room blocked from the inmate’s view by a two-way mirror.

“I want Kathy to know that I love her and I’m very sorry,” Lewis said.

Then, as the drugs flowed into her body, her feet bobbed but she otherwise remained motionless. A guard lightly tapped on her shoulder reassuringly as she slipped into death.

More than 7,300 appeals to stop the execution — the first of a woman in Virginia since 1912 — had been made to the governor in a state second only to Texas in the number of people it executes.

Texas held the most recent U.S. execution of a woman in 2005. Out of more than 1,200 people put to death since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976, only 11 have been women.

Lewis, who defense attorneys said was borderline mentally disabled, had inspired other inmates by singing Christian hymns in prison. Her fate also had drawn appeals from the European Union, an indignant rebuke from Iran and the disgust of thousands of people.

The Lewis execution stirred an unusual amount of attention because of her gender, claims she lacked the intelligence to mastermind the killings and the post-conviction emergence of defense evidence that one of the triggermen manipulated her.

Lewis’ supporters also said she was a changed woman. They pointed to testimonials from former prison chaplains and inmates that Lewis comforted and inspired other inmates with her faith and the hymns and country gospel tunes she sang at the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women where she was held.

Hours before her execution, Lewis met with family, her spiritual adviser and supporters at the Greensville Correctional Center.

Throughout her life, a faith in God had been a seeming constant for Lewis — whether it was the prayer with her husband or her ministry behind bars.

But by her own admission, Lewis’ life was marked by outrageous bouts of sex and betrayal even as she hewed to the trappings of Christianity.

“I was doing drugs, stealing, lying and having several affairs during my marriages,” Lewis wrote in a statement that was read at a prison religious service in August. “I went to church every Sunday, Friday and revivals, but guess what? I didn’t open my Bible at home, only when I was at church.”

 

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