On The Front Lines
Rutherford Institute Urges Governor McDonnell to Respect Value of Human Life, Grant Clemency in Sept. 23 Execution of Teresa Lewis
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. -- Calling on the Commonwealth of Virginia to lead the nation in promoting respect for the value of all human life, innocent and guilty alike, The Rutherford Institute is urging Gov. Robert McDonnell to commute the death sentence of 41-year-old Teresa Lewis, who is scheduled to be executed on September 23, 2010. If the execution is not halted, Lewis, who has an IQ of 72, which is two points above the threshold for clinical mental retardation, would be the first woman put to death in Virginia in nearly 100 years.
The Institute's letter is available here.
"If the death penalty is a necessary evil of our times, it is essential that it be implemented only where there exists virtual certainty of the defendant's factual guilt, virtual certainty of the defendant's mental capacity to understand the nature of his or her crime, and other circumstances manifesting an appalling disregard for human life," stated Whitehead. "To execute a remorseful woman whose mental capacity is as lacking as Teresa Lewis' is to manifest a lack of restraint and compassion that will be a blight on the Commonwealth of Virginia for years to come. It is far more desirable for the Commonwealth to be on the forefront of a trend toward respecting human life and treating the mentally infirm with compassion than to be a heavy-handed, indiscriminate administrator of capital punishment."
Teresa Lewis was convicted in 2003 of conspiring to have two men kill her husband and stepson. Despite her mental deficiencies and her history of non-violence, Lewis was the only one of the three persons involved in the criminal plot who received a capital sentence. Her co-conspirators struck deals for and were granted life sentences. While the justice system was unwilling to compare Teresa's sentence with those of her co-defendants upon review in March 2005, Dr. Costanzo, a professor of psychology and witness for the defense, noted that "From a psychological standpoint, a woman who is functionally retarded intellectually, with passive dependent personality disturbance, and a habit of submissively seeking men's approval throughout her life, is a poor bet as the mastermind of a brutal murder plot." In recent years, Lewis has become a devout Christian and spends much of her time praying for her fellow inmates at the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women and for the families she helped hurt.
In calling on McDonnell to halt the execution and commute Lewis' sentence, Whitehead points out that the standards of decency and humanity are evolving in our nation and in the Commonwealth of Virginia. For example, 3,859 inmates were executed in the United States between 1930 and 1967 compared with 598 from 1977-1999. "Recent advances in our evolving standards of decency could well mean that 30 years from now, 598 executions will be as ghastly as 3,859 executions seem to us now," warns Whitehead. "The increasing safeguards put on capital sentences (including the trend toward categorically excluding the mentally retarded from death row), and the declining number of inmates placed on death row in spite of our rising population, reflect our society's increasingly suspect attitude toward the death penalty."
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