Attorneys for Virginia’s only woman on death row told a federal appeals panel Tuesday that her trial attorneys failed to present evidence of her drug addiction and a disorder for dependency on men.
Attorneys for Teresa Lewis, 40, said she could not have masterminded the plot to hire two men to shoot her husband, Julian Lewis Jr., 51, and his son, Charles Lewis, 25, in Pittsylvania. Prosecutors said Lewis bragged that she had married for money and offered sex in return for helping her kill them for a $250,000 insurance payout. She would be the first woman in Virginia to be executed since 1912, when 17-year-old Virginia Christian died in the electric chair for killing her employer.
— Scott McCabe
