US killer wife faces lethal injection

Teresa Lewis, 41, was sentenced to death for providing sex and money to two men to kill her husband and stepson in 2002 so she could collect on a $250,000 (159,000) insurance payout. The nation's high court refused to intervene on Tuesday.

Two of the three women judges, Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor, voted to stop the execution.

The decision followed Gov Bob McDonnell's refusal to reconsider a clemency request, which he rejected last Friday.

"A good and decent person is about to lose her life because of a system that is broken," said Lewis's attorney James E Rocap III.

Mr Rocap appealed on Monday to Mr McDonnell to reconsider his decision to deny clemency, claiming new evidence should spare Lewis the death penalty.

Mr Rocap argued that one of the gunmen later claimed he manipulated Lewis, who is borderline mentally retarded, "to dupe her into believing he loved her so that he could achieve his own selfish goals".

Mr McDonnell's legal counsel said the governor's decision would stand. Based on a thorough review, "the governor found no compelling reason to grant clemency and made a final decision," J Jasen Eige wrote to Mr Rocap.

The Virginia case has had repercussions as far away as Iran. An Iranian news agency reported that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accused the West of launching a "heavy propaganda" campaign against the case of an Iranian woman who had been sentenced to be stoned to death for adultery but failing to react with outrage over the imminent execution of Lewis.

Lewis pleaded guilty in 2003 to two counts of capital murder for hire in the killings of her husband Julian Lewis and her stepson, Charles Lewis.

The gunmen, Matthew Shallenberger and Rodney Fuller, were sentenced to life terms. Shallenberger, who Mr Rocap names as the mastermind, committed suicide in prison in 2006.

"If she was not the mastermind – and it is now clear she was not – it is grossly unfair to impose the death sentence on her while Shallenberger and Fuller received life," Mr Rocap wrote to Mr McDonnell.

Teresa Lewis and Julian Lewis met in 2000 at a Danville textile factory where they worked and later married. In 2002, Julian's son Charles bought a $250,000 life insurance policy when he was called for active duty by the US Army Reserve. He named his father as beneficiary.

Lewis offered herself and her 16-year-old daughter for sex to Shallenberger and Fuller. She stood by while they shot Lewis, 51, and his son, who was 25, in 2002 in Pittsylvania County in Southside Virginia.

Lewis rummaged through her husband's pockets for money while he lay dying and waited nearly an hour before calling 911.

Lewis allowed a judge to determine her sentence, with her attorneys believing she stood a better chance of getting a life term from the judge who had never sentenced anyone to death.

The last execution of a woman in the US occurred in 2005 when Frances Newton died by injection in Texas. In Virginia, the last woman executed was in 1912, when 17-year-old Virginia Christian died in the electric chair for suffocating her employer.

Thousands of advocates have appealed for clemency, arguing that Lewis is a changed woman.