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First Death Sentence for a Female in the U.S. in 100 Years

Posted on Sep 23, 2010 in National Issues

41 year old Teresa Lewis was scheduled to be executed Thursday at 9 A.M. despite warnings from the European Union and negative remarks from Iran. In 2002, Lewis conspired with hit men to kill her husband and stepson in order to receive a hefty reward from an insurance company which she planned to use to pay the hired guns. Although Virginia has the second most active execution process in the country, it still has not had a female victim in over a century, and massive attention is being brought to the proceedings because of aspects of her defense. Her attorneys claim that Lewis does not possess the intelligence to mastermind such a series of events, and suggest that she was encouraged by the hit men who ultimately went through with the murders. The release of this information prompted the European Union ambassador to the United States to attack the U.S. for executing someone with a mental deficiencies. Since the reinstitution of the death penalty in 1976, only 11 of the 1,200 individuals to receive the sentence have been women, with Lewis expected to be the 12th.