From Virginia

Tony Mauro writes, "Attorney: Teresa Lewis a 'Poster Child' for Broken Death Penalty System." for the National Law Journal.

The only thing sustaining Jim Rocap III in the last few days, he said Tuesday, was the classic Winston Churchill admonition: "If you are going through hell, keep going."

Rocap, partner at Steptoe & Johnson in D.C. has represented Virginia death row inmate Teresa Lewis since 2004. But this week the final avenues of appeal were closing, one by one. Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell refused to grant clemency twice, and late Tuesday the U.S. Supreme Court denied Lewis a stay of execution by a 7-2 vote and rejected Rocap's petition for certiorari. Barring any unforeseen development, she will be executed tonight at 9 at the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt, the first woman put to death in nearly a century by Virginia.

"We are deeply disappointed," Rocap said in a statement after the Court action was announced. "A good and decent person is about to lose her life because of a system that is badly broken."

Earlier on Tuesday Rocap sounded optimistic, having filed with the Court a petition offering two seemingly plausible arguments for habeas relief: one, based on Apprendi v. New Jersey claiming a jury, not a judge should have decided if she should be sentenced to death, and the other a Strickland v. Washington claim about the trial lawyer's failure to rebut aggravating factors raised during her sentencing.

"This was not an innocence case, but it is as good an example as you can find of someone who should not be put to death," said Rocap. "Teresa is a poster child for why the death penalty process is broken."

And:

Rocap took on her case as part of the American Bar Association's project that recruits lawyers to represent death row inmates who have no lawyer. He specializes in civil litigation, but had previously handled a capital case while working with Seth Waxman, then the future solicitor general, at Miller Cassidy. Chair of Steptoe's pro bono committee, Rocap said the firm has been "very supportive" of his long-running representation.

As soon as he looked into Lewis's case, Rocap said, "I thought, 'something is wrong here.' She has no background whatsoever in this kind of activity." He identified several flaws in the case, including the court-appointed counsel's failure to rebut the state's assertion that her "depravity of mind" was an aggravating factor that justified the death penalty.

The latest AP report is, "Va. woman, out of options, nears execution," via Google News.  It's by Steve Szkotak.

Hours before her execution, Lewis was meeting with family, her spiritual adviser and supporters at the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt, where she is scheduled to die by injection at 9 p.m.

The U.S. Supreme Court and Gov. Bob McDonnell have refused to stop her execution.

"Impending execution of Virginia woman brings spotlight to rarity of females on death row," is the title of a report by Daphne Duret in the Palm Beach Post.

Teresa Lewis is already a novelty: the only woman on Virginia's death row.

On Thursday, she's likely to join an even more exclusive club: the first woman that state has executed in nearly a century, and one of only a dozen female prisoners put to death in the United States since the 1970s.

The 41-year-old grandmother's impending execution has been the source of public commentary from people such as novelist John Grisham and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It also has inspired discussion about why the United States' death chambers have shown such an extreme gender imbalance.

Only 11 women in the nation have been executed since the 1970s, a period that has seen the executions of more than 1,200 men. Florida executed two of those women, and today has just one female prisoner on death row.

"It could be for any number of reasons, and because the numbers are so small, it's really difficult to make generalizations or point out a trend," said Richard Dieter, director of the Washington, D.C.-based Death Penalty Information Center.

Dieter and other experts say that more than anything, fewer women are executed because fewer are convicted of the types of especially heinous murders for which prosecutors usually seek the death penalty.

Although women commit roughly 10 percent of murders, Dieter said, most of the cases involve people they know and carry little evidence of cold, calculated premeditation, depraved indifference and other common aggravators in death penalty cases. When women are involved in such cases, Dieter said, they rarely act alone.

The BBC also examines the larger issue of women under sentence of death in, "Is Teresa Lewis an unusual death row case?"  It's reported by Finlo Rohrer from Washington, DC.

Women are not often executed in the US.

The statistics are striking, notes Victor Streib, professor of law at Ohio Northern University and a student of female death penalty cases for 30 years.

From 1 January 1973 to 30 June 2009, 8,118 people were sentenced to death in the US. Only 165 of those were women, 2% of the total.

In the same period, of the 1,168 executions that have taken place, only 11 have been of women.

"The death penalty for women is extremely rare," says Prof Streib. "They tend to be screened out."

But they commit 10-12% of capital murders, says Prof Streib.

Historically, he notes, judges would openly say that the death penalty was not an option because the defendant was a woman. Now such a statement would be unthinkable, but there may be a hangover from earlier attitudes.

"We are more likely to believe a woman is mentally disturbed or under the control of a man, than a man," says Prof Strieb.

He wonders whether the apparent bias in sentencing could be because of cultural attitudes in law enforcement or even in the wider public.

Bianca Jagger posts, "I Urge Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell to Stop the Execution of Teresa Lewis," at Huffington Post.

I appeal to him to halt the execution of Teresa Lewis and grant her clemency, commuting her sentence to life imprisonment. It is not too late. If Teresa Lewis is executed tonight, in this questionable case, it will be an egregious miscarriage of justice: a lasting shame on the American legal system.

Earlier coverage begins with this post.  Her execution is scheduled to take place in less than four hours.