US executes woman with IQ of 70

Teresa Lewis appeared fearful, her jaw clenched, as she was escorted into the death chamber.

• "I was doing drugs, stealing, lying and having affairs" - Teresa Lewis Picture: Getty

She glanced tensely around at 14 assembled State of Virginia corrections officials before being bound to a metal trolley with heavy leather straps.

Minutes later she was dead.

On Thursday night, Lewis became the 11th woman to be executed in the US, out of a total of around 1,200 executions, since the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976.

Her sentence had drawn appeals from the European Union, a rebuke from Iran, and the condemnation of thousands of anti-death penalty campaigners.

She had been convicted to arranging the murder of her husband and a stepson to cash in on a $250,000 insurance police. She enticed two men through sex. cash and a cut of the insurance to shoot husband Julian and his son Charles as they slept in October 2002. The killers were sentenced to life, with one killing himself in 2006.

But tests in prison revealed Lewis has an IQ just above 70, the level at which someone is considered mentally subnormal in the US.

She became the first woman executed in Virginia in nearly a century and the first put to death in the US in five years. Supporters and relatives of the victims watched her execution at Greensville Correctional Centre in Jarratt.

Moments before it, Lewis asked if her husband's daughter was near. Kathy Clifton, Lewis' stepdaughter, was in an adjacent witness room blocked from view by a two-way mirror.

"I want Kathy to know that I love her and I'm very sorry," Lewis said. Drugs then flowed into her motionless body, causing her feet to bob, while a guard lightly tapped her on the shoulder as she slipped into death.

Supporters claimed Lewis had changed in prison, comforting fellow inmates with her Christian faith. Hours before her execution, Lewis met with family, her spiritual adviser and supporters.

The minister, the Reverend Julie Perry, stood sobbing as she later witnessed the execution, clutching a religious book.

Throughout her life, faith had been a seeming constant for Lewis - whether it was the prayer with her husband or her ministry behind bars.

But by her own admission, Lewis's life has been marked by binges involving sex and betrayals even as she appeared outwardly devout.

"I was doing drugs, stealing, lying and having several affairs during my marriages," Lewis wrote in a statement read at a prison religious service in August.

"I went to church every Sunday, Friday and revivals but guess what? I didn't open my Bible at home, only when I was at church."