Teresa Lewis, who plotted with her young lover to kill her husband and stepson for insurance money, became the first woman executed in Virginia in nearly 100 years Thursday night when she was killed by lethal injection. She is the first woman to be executed in Virginia since 1912 and the 12th woman to be executed in the United States since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976. The most recent was in Texas in 2005, when Frances Newton was killed by lethal injection for shooting her husband and two children. More than 5,000 people had signed an electronic petition asking Gov. Robert McDonnell to spare her life because of her mental issues. The European Union asked McDonnell to spare her life, and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad referenced the case at an appearance in New York. He's probably thinking what we're thinking: How come the United States condemns other nations for executions when we execute people here? Stoning and beheading are considered archaic, but the end result is the same, isn't it?
Read more at The Washington Post.