Courts - Virginia Appeals court hears only woman on state's death row She would be the first woman put to death in U.S. since Frances Newton was executed in 2005

By Dena Potter Associated Press Writer RICHMOND, Va. (AP) -- Attorneys for Virginia's only woman on death row told a federal appeals panel Tuesday that she was too dependent on other people and prescription drugs to have plotted to have her husband and stepson killed to collect the insurance. Attorneys for Teresa Lewis, 40, argued before a three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that her trial attorneys erred by not presenting evidence of her drug addiction and dependency disorder at her sentencing. A state attorney countered that Lewis masterminded the plot, using sexual favors and manipulation to convince two men to kill her husband and stepson to collect a $250,000 life insurance policy. Lewis pleaded guilty in 2002 to hiring the men to shoot her husband, Julian Clifton Lewis Jr., 51, and his son, Charles J. Lewis, 25, in their Pittsylvania home. Charles Lewis was on leave from Army National Guard duty. The gunmen, Rodney Fuller and Matthew Shallenberger, were sentenced to life in prison. Lewis' daughter, Christie Lynn Bean, who was 16 at the time, served five years because she knew about the plan but remained silent. The court usually takes several weeks to issue a ruling. If it denies her appeal, a Circuit Court soon after could set an execution date for Lewis. Lewis would be the first woman executed in Virginia since 1912, when 17-year-old Virginia Christian died in the electric chair for suffocating her female employer. She would be the first woman put to death in the U.S. since 2005, when Frances Newton died by lethal injection in Texas. James Rocap, Lewis' attorney, said her lawyers could have presented hundreds of pages of medical and pharmaceutical records showing her increased dependency on prescription drugs following her mother's death, and expert testimony showing that her disorder made her especially dependent on men. "She was not a person who could have come up with this," Rocap said. It was a much different picture than the state painted of a cold, cunning leader who used sex and money to get what she wanted. Lewis bragged to two friends that she was marrying Julian for his money, came up with the idea, offered sex in return for helping her kill them and provided the money to buy the weapons, said Katherine Burnett, a senior assistant attorney general. After a first attempt to kill Julian on his way to work failed, Lewis unlocked the door to their home and stood by while Fuller and Shallenberger shot her husband and stepson, then she rummaged through her husband's pockets for money and waited an hour before calling 911, said Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III. "She was the one who stood to benefit from the death of both CJ and Julian," Wilkinson said. "It was to her benefit to set these events in motion." Burnett said Lewis' trial attorneys knew about her drug abuse and dependency but chose not to bring up the issue during sentencing because it would have opened the door for evidence of Lewis' infidelities and other unflattering indiscretions. "It's not that trial counsel didn't know about any of this, it's that trial counsel chose not to use it," Burnett said. In a 2004 interview with The Associated Press, Lewis said she hired the hitmen to escape an abusive relationship. She said she and Shallenberger became lovers and concocted the scheme to murder her husband, who she said was an abusive alcoholic. "I'm not going to stand up here and say this is not a bad crime...," Rocap said. "Our point is that nobody tried to explain why" she did it or whether she was the mastermind. Published: Thu, Mar 25, 2010

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