Teresa Lewis

Teresa Lewis (born April 26, 1969 , † September 23, 2010 in Jarratt , Virginia ) was an American who was sentenced to death for the murder of her husband and stepson and was executed in September 2010. Her case attracted a lot of attention mainly because she had instigated the murder, but not carried it out herself, and because her IQ was on the verge of a mental handicap and her full guilt was therefore questionable.

Double homicide

In 2002, according to her later confession , Lewis hired two people to kill her husband and his son so that she could receive the life insurance . For this purpose, she did not lock the door of her caravan on October 30, 2002. The perpetrators, armed with firearms, gained access to the caravan and shot the two victims. Lewis' stepson succumbed to his injuries on the scene, her husband later died in hospital after Teresa Lewis sat next to him for about 45 minutes before calling ambulance. Before his death, the husband named Teresa Lewis as the person who knew the perpetrators. According to the results of the investigation, Lewis had planned a life together with one of the perpetrators she had met in a supermarket, Matthew S. To make the act possible, she had also offered her daughter to one of the later perpetrators for sexual intercourse.

Verdict and execution

The two hired killers were after a deal each of the offender Rodney F. to life imprisonment sentenced. Lewis received the death penalty as the instigator . Usually, in a murder case, after a defendant's confession, an eventual death penalty of life imprisonment with no early release is recognized. The public perceived that Lewis' intelligence quotient was just over 70 according to a test, which in the United States is considered the limit for so-called nonsense . However, the judge could not find any limitation of the culpability . Matthew S. later claimed in a letter to his girlfriend to have instigated Lewis to act in order to get money himself. However, the letter was not sufficient for a retrial . Matthew S. committed three years later in prison suicide .

Lewis was considered a model prisoner in prison and was popular as a counselor among her fellow inmates. This fact somewhat contradicts the results of their IQ scores, which differ greatly in various tests, but are always relatively low. On September 17, Governor Robert McDonnell turned down a pardon. Lewis called the Supreme Court , which a few days before the execution rejected the motion to stay the execution in favor of life imprisonment by 7-2 votes . Lewis is the twelfth woman to have been executed since the death penalty was reinstated in the United States in 1976. In Virginia , she was the first woman to be executed in 98 years. She was killed by lethal injection .

Individual references and sources

1. ↑ Uwe Schmitt for Welt Online : Murderess with an IQ of just over 70 is executed . September 22, 2010. Retrieved September 28, 2010
2. ↑ dpa via ftd (online): Double murder: the Supreme Court permits the execution of American women ( memento of September 23, 2010 in the Internet Archive ). September 22, 2010. Retrieved September 29, 2010
3. ↑ David Weyand for Der Spiegel : Planned Execution of Teresa Lewis: The Merciless State September 18, 2010, accessed September 29, 2010