TRI In The News
Serving Justice and Also Mercy
From The Virginian-Pilot
Original article available here.
The only woman on Virginia's death row is scheduled to be executed next week. She shouldn't be killed, but not because of her gender.
Teresa Lewis, 41, is borderline mentally retarded, with an IQ of 72 - a fact that makes it highly unlikely she masterminded the killing of her husband and his adult son in 2002. She didn't act alone, yet she's been sentenced to lose her life while the two who carried out the murders received life sentences.
She is no danger to anyone in prison; in fact, just the opposite. Those who work or live in Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women say she has a calming effect on fellow inmates, even though she's in solitary confinement and can't see them.
Lewis, whose only previous crime was forging a prescription, doesn't dispute that she participated in horrendous acts.
In fact, the Danville woman pleaded guilty, waiving her right to a jury trial. A jury had rejected the death penalty for one co-defendant. When it came time to sentence the second defendant - the one who admitted on several occasions that he planned the killings so he could get money from Lewis' husband's estate and from her stepson's life insurance - the judge sent him to prison for life, too. He said it would be unfair to sentence one killer to die and allow another to live.
That's exactly the flaw in administering the death penalty, and one of several reasons to commute Lewis' sentence to life. Lewis is preparing to die for her crimes. Others convicted of masterminding killings are serving life in prison; still others have served a lesser sentence and are back among society.
Even if Gov. Bob McDonnell commutes Lewis' sentence, she will spend the rest of her life in a prison cell. There is no possibility of parole.
John Whitehead, founder of the Charlottesville-based Rutherford Institute, wrote McDonnell, advocating for commutation. Executing her, he said, would be "an inappropriate and inhumane application of capital punishment.
"If the death penalty is a necessary evil of our times," Whitehead wrote, "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."
Lewis' diminished mental capacity is undisputed. The argument for commutation for Lewis, who by all accounts models good behavior in the grimmest of places, should be a compelling one for McDonnell, despite his support for the death penalty.
Execution may be permitted under the law, and it may satisfy those who crave an eye for an eye. But in this case, life in prison is an adequate - and far more civilized - punishment that ensures justice is served.
