On September 17, Governor Robert McDonnell announced that he would not grant clemen­cy to Teresa Lewis, who is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed in Virginia on September 23. Requests for a com­mu­ta­tion of her death sen­tence had come from thou­sands of indi­vid­u­als, from men­tal health groups, the European Union and nov­el­ist John Grisham. Many had point­ed to the fact that two co-defen­dants in the mur­ders that sent Lewis to death row had received life sen­tences, even though they actu­al­ly car­ried out the killings. Information that became avail­able after Lewis’s tri­al showed that she has an IQ of 72, near the lev­el of intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty that would have ren­dered her death sen­tence uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. She also suf­fered from a depen­dent per­son­al­i­ty dis­or­der. A let­ter from one of the co-defen­dants in prison indi­cat­ed that he had manip­u­lat­ed Lewis into going along with the mur­der of her hus­band. Lewis still has a peti­tion pend­ing before the U.S. Supreme Court, and her attor­neys have indi­cat­ed they will ask the gov­er­nor to recon­sid­er his decision.

(M. Glod & A. Kumar, ​“McDonnell won’t call off exe­cu­tion,” Washington Post, Sept. 18, 2010; DPIC sources). See Clemency and Women. Supporters for Teresa Lewis have post­ed a short video about her.

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