Teresa Lewis - Nothing More to Do

September 23 - I thought all day about Teresa Lewis. At times I actually had a physical sensation of her - and I thought about her all summer, too, believing that such a miscarriage of justice - her getting the death penalty, the two gunmen getting life - would be an obvious cause for commuting her sentence. Yet I wasn't surprised when Governor McDonnell refused to commute her sentence.

Tonight, at about 8:30, I went to the vigil organized by Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty at the Clarendon Metro – a site chosen for visibility. It wasn’t a very spiritual or soulful or even mournful event – it was a public education and awareness event, as the leader, a young man named Tobias, clearly said. (After all, what could be done?) We stood in a circle – at least a dozen of us – talked for about 10 minutes, joined hands for a minute at about 9, then talked for 15 or so minutes until someone learned via their phone that she was dead (pronounced dead at 9:13), and then we held hands for another minute and went our ways. There really wasn’t anything more to do.

I had had various questions about the gender issue as I visited her website and read about the case in The Post: did she get the death penalty because she was a woman (to oversimplify the matter), did that figure in at all, did her being a woman drive her behavior, was Bob McDonnell being truthful when he said gender did not play a role in his decision to decline her appeal? At the vigil, a young attorney who had worked on the case at Steptoe and Johnson talked about the gender aspect. He said psychologists had testified that Teresa had “dependent personality disorder,” a DSM -recognized condition, and had always done what men told her to do. As a woman, I can relate to that behavior – it’s almost instinctive at times, there’s such a strong pull to “obey” (although it doesn’t justify committing a crime, of course). I think of the young woman sentenced to a long prison term – in Virginia – for carrying dope for her boyfriend.

But what really upset me – what I still can’t shake – is the unfairness of the sentences. My gut feeling is that Teresa was seen as a jezebel, an evil power, using sexuality to manipulate and for gain – a prostitute. The triggermen - Matthew Shallenberger (who committed suicide in prison) and his former roommate and friend Rodney Fuller – were sentenced to life terms at their separate trials. (One of them negotiated a deal.) But the judge deemed Teresa the crime's mastermind and called her "the head of this serpent"- which some interpret as a biblical reference alluding to Eve (or at least it sounds like it’s biblical). Most of the photos of her made her look deranged, brutish, capable of any and all cruelties. In the one on her website, she looked like the lady next door - and then there was the one of her as a little girl.

Sexuality permeated just about everything in this sordid story (or at least what I know about it). The most recent Post story made Teresa seem like a pimp because she encouraged her daughter to have sex with Fuller (Teresa was sleeping with Shallenberger). The attorney at the vigil dismissed the importance of this, saying Teresa thought her daughter would like Fuller! The repeated references to Teresa's "young lover" were rhetorically loaded - they made her seem like a horny old gal who'd do anything for a hot young guy...anything.

Then there was the huge matter of whether Shallenberger was using Teresa – whether when he met her at Wal-Mart (talk about the banality of evil!), he thought she was an easy mark, so he could get the insurance money. His IQ was said to be 113 – her IQ, 72 or 73, borderline mentally retarded. Lewis’ attorney, James E. Rocap III appealed Monday to Governor McDonnell to reconsider his decision to deny clemency to Lewis, claiming there was new evidence that should spare Teresa the death penalty. He argued that Shallenberger later - in jail - claimed he manipulated Teresa, "to dupe her into believing he loved her so that he could achieve his own selfish goals." Shallenberger wrote about this in a letter, which he destroyed – by eating part of it (if I understood the attorney at the vigil correctly). The letter, or what was left of it, was never introduced as evidence – but couldn’t McDonnell have taken it into consideration? Weren’t there many things he could have taken into consideration? After all, he is pro-life - or is that just for embryos and fetuses?

Besides being borderline retarded, Teresa took a massive amount of pain medication, which disoriented her, according to the attorney at the vigil. Personally, I believe that over-medication is a gender issue – as is depression. Men can and do over-medicate and are depressed but the causes can be quite different from those affecting women. Both over-medication and depression need to be considered in light of gender norms - you get a fuller picture of Teresa's mental state and her capabilities when you pair her over-medication with the gender-related "dependency disorder."

Was Teresa even capable of masterminding a plot like this – Teresa as described by The Post this evening (post-execution) as a woman “who plotted with her young lover to kill her husband and stepson for insurance money” and in another news report as “scheduled to die by injection Thursday for providing sex and money to two men to kill her husband and stepson in October 2002 so she could collect on a quarter-million dollar insurance pay out.” Teresa who apparently had never done anything violent before? That’s a complex scheme for a non-violent, not very bright, not very aggressive or directed, very gullible lady, or at least it would be in my experience. (And let's remember she met him at Wal-Mart.)

A NOW friend wondered what could be done to stop the execution of another woman when there are clearly unresolved issues and questions– and she noted that two of the three women on the Supreme Court, Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor, voted to stop the execution. Perhaps more women on the court? Would Teresa have been saved during the Kaine administration? Kaine commuted two sentences, so she might have fared better, if there were legal grounds for a commutation. Apparently the Supreme Court didn’t think there were.

Maybe I’ve been a feminist too long, maybe I see everything through a gender lens, but on balance, I think Teresa got shafted (yes, I know that word has connotations) because she came off as a manipulative woman – a bitch. The mental picture of her standing there while her husband bled to death – standing there coldly, is the usual phrase - is enough to put the fear of God in any man. I think that and a less-than-adequate defense did her in. (Interestingly, if I understood the attorney at the vigil correctly, she might not have been sentenced to death under new guidelines adopted after her crime).

Teresa’s attorney, Rocap, called her "a good and decent person" and said she was being put to death “because of a system that is broken" (according to the news report, he was referring to the decision by the Supreme Court and McDonnell's rejection of clemency). I don’t know that she was all that decent (I can only wonder, how could a decent person ever fall to such depths, absent some crushing burden or total mental collapse?) but I believe she was a victim of a system that treats people who commit the same or similar crime differently, that penalizes those who fail to “play” the judicial system to maximum advantage, that discriminates against the powerless and the less capable. And I wonder – what in her life ever indicated she would cause murder to be committed – would cold-heartedly take the lives of her husband and his son. And what was her daughter up to – never saying a word (she went to jail for five years for that)?

As person after person said at the vigil, the death penalty is a moral issue. Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty opposed the execution of John Mohammed. Someone mentioned that Teresa's death certificate would give the cause of death as "homicide" - the very crime she was convicted of committing. A young woman at the vigil said she opposed the death penalty because there is always the possibility for change for the better - as long as there is life. Another young woman said she opposed the death penalty because all life is sacred, all life hs value. As for me, if even one person is executed wrongly, a monstrous evil has occurred;. And the fact that so many Black men are executed is clear proof the death penalty is discriminatory on the basis of race.

Tonight, I am resolved to actively oppose the death penalty. In the case of Teresa, it seems that there was more evidence to be heard and that doubts remain. There is something very wrong about killing her and allowing the other two to deal their way out of death. Death is irreversible, the ultimate silencer.

God does death – not us. I feel cold and aching - like I have been hurt, lost something, been diminished.

Thank you for reading this.