know what you have left, you can put anything into this one. i thought you were saying it cleans you out. i was going to say, okay, thanks for that tease. it s spicy enough. good morning, everybody, i m rob nelson. i m vinita nair. the first woman executed in the u.s. in five years was put to death in virginia. teresa lewis case gained international attention not only because of her gender. also activists argued she lacked the intelligence to mastermind the crime. jim sciutto now reports from virginia s death row. reporter: teresa lewis has confessed to a cold and calculating crime. asking her lover and a friend to kill her husband and stepson, to collect a $250,000 life insurance policy. in a jail house interview with cnn, she pled for forgiveness. i wish i could take it back. and i m sorry for all the people that i ve hurt. reporter: but complicating the case, lewis did not pull the trigger. the men who did only got life in prison. and crucially, court-appointed do
chief fired both officers for insubordination. a high-profile execution has been carried out in virginia. teresa lewis was put to death for arranging the murder of her husband and stepson. as brad wheelis reports, supporters had argued until the very end that lewis was simply not smart enough to carry out the crime. reporter: thursday night, teresa lewis became the first woman executed in virginia in almost 100 years. death was pronounced at 9:13 p.m. reporter: lewis was sentenced to death in 2003 for hiring two killers, who shot her husband and her stepson. according to the prosecutors, the two were lured into lewis scheme by sex and money. the money in the form of her promise to split her son and husband s life insurance settlement with them. $250,000. lewis later confessed to the plot. i wish i could take it back. and i m sorry for all the people that i ve hurt. reporter: according to a witness of the execution, these were her last words.
of 72. just 2 points above the legal minimum for execution in virginia. a duke university psychologist who examined her for the defense concluded, teresa s functional mental age is in the range of 12 to 14 years. rallying to her cause are novelist john grisham, justices sonia sotomayor and ruth bader ginsburg, who voted to stay her execution. and thousands on the web. for the victim s daughter, all the focus on lewis is just one more crime against her family. she could have walked away from my father and never looked back. and i think people need to remember her victims and not her. reporter: in an internet video by her supporters, lewis sings for a final miracle. reporter: with her appeals exhausted, her fight ended here in this death chamber. lewis was given a lethal injection and pronounced dead 13 minutes later. witnesses said she refused to take a sedative and her final words addressed to the daughter of the husband she murdered, saying she loves her very much