June 7 VIRGINIA: Only woman on Virginia death row says sentence unfair The only woman on Virginia's death row admits she hired the killers of her husband and his son, but she can't understand why she was condemned to die and the triggermen got life in prison. "I deserved punishment for what happened, but I don't think I deserved the death penalty," Teresa Lewis said in her 1st interview from prison. The 35-year-old Lewis pleaded guilty last year to arranging the slayings of her husband and stepson to collect a $250,000 insurance policy. She was sentenced to death June 3, 2003. "I got sentenced with the death penalty and got brought here the same day," said Lewis, speaking by phone through a glass partition at the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women. At her sentencing, Circuit Judge Charles Strauss said Lewis had no motive but greed in the Oct. 30, 2002, slayings and was even more culpable than the 2 young men she hired to kill 51-year-old Julian Lewis and his 25-year-old son, C.J. Lewis. Strauss was particularly bothered by the slaying of C.J., who was home on leave from Army National Guard duty and "by all accounts was a fine young man." Teresa Lewis kissed him goodnight in the family's Pittsylvania County home, knowing the hit men were coming. Prosecutor David Grimes said he sought the death penalty because "her actions in planning and getting the other 2 to actually do the shooting was extraordinarily cold." Still, defense attorney Thomas Blaylock said he was shocked at Lewis' sentence because she was the 1st to confess and led police to the triggermen. Lewis could become the 1st woman executed in Virginia since 1912 when 17-year-old Virginia Christian died in the electric chair for suffocating her female employer with a towel. Smiling and laughing through much of a recent hourlong interview with The Associated Press, Lewis said she's confident she can avoid execution. "I don't think it's fair for the triggermen to get life, and I got the death penalty," she said. "I just feel like I have something to live for. I've got a daughter here." Christie Lynn Bean, 17, is serving five years at the Fluvanna prison because she knew about the murder plot but remained silent. A jury convicted Bean of conspiring with her mother and of two counts of first-degree murder as an accessory before the fact. "I feel terrible for her being here," Lewis said. "She knew about it before it happened. Oh, what a mess! I didn't think about the consequences it would bring. I hate myself." Lewis said she met would-be triggermen Matthew Shallenberger and Rodney Fuller, both in their 20s, while waiting in the customer service line at a Wal-Mart store. She and Shallenberger became lovers and concocted the scheme to murder Julian Lewis, who she said was an abusive alcoholic. "My motive was to get rid of Julian because I was a prisoner in my own home," Lewis said. "I didn't care about the money." Lewis hopes she can win a new trial, or at least a reduced sentence. The sentencing of murder-for-hire masterminds to life behind bars is not without precedent. In 1993, Robin Radcliff hired Mario Murphy to beat her husband to death with a pipe in Virginia Beach. Both were convicted of capital murder, but Radcliff got life in prison; Murphy the death penalty. Lewis, one of 47 women among the more than 3,500 inmates on death row in the United States, lives in a cellblock with inmates who have violated prison rules, but spends most of her time alone in her cell. She said she is required to exercise alone in the recreation area and is kept away for the general prison population. "They close me away from the world," said Lewis, dressed in pajama-like prison blues with shackles. The Virginia Supreme Court rejected Lewis' appeal in March. Blaylock said the case will be appealed to the federal courts. Virginia has executed 91 people since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, 2nd behind Texas. Of the 912 people executed nationally since then, only 10 have been women. (source: Associated Press) SOUTH DAKOTA: No decision yet on death penalty in door-to-door murder case It will be at least a month before prosecutors decide whether to seek the death penalty against the man accused of killing a door-to-door salesperson. Neil Frame, 41, faces 1st-degree murder charges for the strangling death of Kristina Moore. Moore came to his Rapid Valley home in April selling magazines. Pennington County prosecutors say much of the forensics evidence is still undergoing testing at the state lab. Lawyers wont know how to proceed with the case, or even when to set a trial date, until that testing is complete. The judge today also ordered the state to turn over to the defense all recorded statements made by Frame and other witnesses before his arrest. (source: KOTA news)
