RICHMONDThe Virginia Department of Corrections says the only woman on the state's death row has declined to choose the method of her scheduled Sept. 23 execution.
That means lethal injection will be the procedure when 40-year-old Teresa Lewis of Pittsylvania County is put to death for plotting to have her husband and stepson killed in 2002 so she could collect a $250,000 life insurance policy.
State law allows a condemned inmate to select either electrocution or lethal injection. The latter procedure is used if the inmate declines to choose.
Lewis would be the first woman executed in Virginia in nearly 100 years and the first in the U.S. since 2005.
Lewis offered herself and her 16-year-old daughter for sex to two men who committed the killings. She provided money to buy the murder weapons and stood by while they shot her husband, Julian Clifton Lewis Jr., 51, and stepson Charles J. Lewis, 25.
Lewis rummaged through her husband's pockets for money while he lay dying and waited nearly an hour before calling 911.
The gunmen, Rodney Fuller and Matthew Shallenberger, were sentenced to life in prison. Shallenberger committed suicide in prison in 2006.
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