John GrishamJohn Grisham: Teresa Lewis didn't pull the trigger. Why is she on death row?
Sunday, September 12, 2010
The Commonwealth of Virginia already has a serious relationship with its death penalty. In the past three decades, only Texas has executed more inmates. But on Sept. 23, the Old Dominion will enter new territory when it executes a female inmate for the first time in nearly a century.
To read the rest of Grisham's Op Ed and see related boxes GO here
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Also Posted: September 14, 2010 at Death Penalty Information Center (summary of the above Op Ed if no time to read in full now:
Acclaimed author John Grisham recently published an op-ed in the Washington Post questioning why Teresa Lewis is facing the death penalty when both her co-defendants, two men who actually committed the killings, were given life-without-parole sentences. According to Grisham, the judge who sentenced Lewis to death mistakenly believed that she was the “mastermind” behind the killings. However, it has now been revealed that her IQ of 72 makes her borderline intellectually disabled, that she suffered from a dependent personality disorder and other addictions, and that she lacked the basic skills necessary to organize a conspiracy to commit murder for hire. Grisham wrote, “In this case, as in so many capital cases, the imposition of a death sentence had little do with fairness. Like other death sentences, it depended more upon the assignment of judge and prosecutor, the location of the crime, the quality of the defense counsel, the speed with which a co-defendant struck a deal, the quality of each side's experts and other such factors. In Virginia, the law is hardly consistent."
CLICK here for short top story entitled NEW VOICES: John Grisham Asks-- Why is Teresa Lewis on Death Row?
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For other related URLS:
Teresa's Chaplain GO here
Death Penalty Information Center File GO here
For Dr. Rick Halperin's Death Penalty News & Updates GO here
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