Gov. Bob McDonnell refused Friday to block the planned execution of a death row inmate who would become the first woman to be executed in Virginia in nearly a century. 

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McDonnell said he reviewed Teresa Lewis' guilty plea, court and psychiatric records and found no reason to commute her sentence to life without parole for the hired killings of her husband and stepson.

"Lewis does not deny that she committed these heinous crimes," McDonnell said in a statement. 

Lewis, 41, is set to die by injection Thursday at Greensville Correctional Center unless the U.S. Supreme Court stops the execution.

An attorney for Lewis called the governor's decision a bitter disappointment.
"We intend to keep fighting for her life, however, because Teresa's execution would be such a grave injustice," Jim Rocap III said in a statement.

Lewis would be the first woman executed in Virginia since 1912, and the first U.S. execution of a woman in five years.

Lewis was sentenced to death for masterminding the slayings of her husband and stepson in their Pittsylvania County home in 2002 so she could collect a $250,000 life insurance policy.

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, in Pittsylvania County in south-central Virginia.
The gunmen, Rodney Fuller and Matthew Shallenberger, were sentenced to life in prison. Shallenberger committed suicide in prison in 2006.

Lewis's daughter, Christie Lynn Bean, served five years because she knew about the plan but remained silent.

Kathy Clifton, Julian's daughter, said she plans to witness the execution Thursday.

"It's been eight long years and it would be very nice to be able to shut the door on this chapter and go on," she said Friday.

Advocates for Lewis have said Shallenberger confided before his suicide that it was him, not Lewis, who planned the killings and that he was using Lewis to get to her husband's money.

Rocap has also said that Lewis is "on the cusp of mental retardation" and should be spared the death penalty.

"This is not over yet," he said.

By DENA POTTER Associated Press Writer