Posted on 09/23/2010 8:21:44 AM PDT by Inappropriate Laughter
RICHMOND, Va. -- Virginia was moving forward Thursday with its first execution of a woman in nearly a century amid appeals from the European Union and repercussions that reached as far away as Iran.
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Teresa Lewis, 41, was scheduled to die by injection at 9 p.m. at Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt for the October 2002 hired killings of her husband and stepson. To procure the hit men, prosecutors said, she used sex, cash and a promised cut of the insurance benefits the killings would reap her.
The U.S. Supreme Court and Gov. Bob McDonnell declined to intervene. All her legal appeals have been exhausted, her attorney said.
In a state with the second busiest death chamber in the U.S., the Lewis execution has 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.
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In a letter this month to McDonnell, the European Union asked the governor to commute her sentence to life, citing Lewis' mental capacity. Her lawyers have said testing shows Lewis is borderline mentally retarded.
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Earlier this week, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accused Western media of having a double standard in reporting on the Lewis execution.
He compared coverage of the Lewis case to the "heavy propaganda" campaign against the case of an Iranian woman who had been sentenced to be stoned to death for adultery.
"Meanwhile, nobody objects to the case of an American woman who is going to be executed," he was quoted as saying during a speech Monday to Islamic clerics and other figures in New York.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
They called her "retarded" on the basis of an IQ test administered after her arrest.
One has to wonder about the reliability of an IQ test for somebody who is under indictment for murder, and furthermore under a defense lawyer's care.
In my Bible, the Apostle Paul has this to say: "For (temporal authority) is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil."
May justice roll down like a river.
People who are genuinely retarded don’t try ot hide the things they do since they don’t see right/wrong the way we do. Therefore they are not culpable. But this woman tried to hide it.
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