JARRATT, Va. — For Lynn
Litchfield, the former chaplain at Virginia’s Fluvanna Correctional Center for
Women, the past few weeks have been a heartbreaking build-up to the execution
of Teresa Lewis. On Sept. 23, Lewis became the first woman put to death by the
Commonwealth of Virginia in nearly a century.
Seven years ago, when Teresa
Lewis was sentenced, the Baptist chaplain began praying for her and for the
families of the victims even before Lewis arrived at the prison. “Choosing to
love someone condemned to death was never a comfortable idea,” Litchfield wrote
in a Sept. 21 opinion piece for
the British newspaper The Guardian. “I knew I would be exposing myself to a
relationship in which, the more I gave to it, the deeper my hurt would be
should her sentence be carried out. Yet, as a person of faith, I believe I am
called to live out mercy, grace and love for ‘the least of these’ and Teresa
Lewis was certainly among the least.”
Litchfield didn’t write
Lewis off as a hopeless cause, although many others had. Years ago, in an
unhappy marriage, Lewis began an adulterous relationship with a young man,
Matthew Shallenberger. Later, Shallenberger and a friend of his — seeking money
for a drug enterprise and with Lewis’ cooperation — killed Lewis’ husband,
Julian, and adult stepson, C.J., in their beds while they slept. The two men
who actually pulled the triggers were sent to prison for life, but Lewis, whom
the judge believed to have masterminded the scheme, received a death sentence.
Because she entered a guilty
plea, no real defense was mounted on Lewis’ behalf. After her sentencing, and
too late to be entered into evidence, information questioning her mental
capacity to have formulated such plans surfaced, as did statements from
Shallenberger and others saying he had actually been the one to plan the
murders. They were disregarded.
During her six years of
ministry to the women at Fluvanna, Litchfield spent many hours talking with
Lewis, though physical contact was limited. “My hands were the only ones to
hold hers in comfort or in prayer on the occasions when guards would open the
food-tray slot for me. I regularly visited her and heard her hopes, her fears,
her grief and her faith. I was her chaplain.”
The visits paid off as Lewis
began to respond to the idea that no one is beyond God’s love and the hope of
redemption. Lewis committed her life to Christ and was baptized.
Some discount Lewis’
commitment as just another jailhouse conversion, Litchfield acknowledged. She
estimated that between 15,000 and 21,000 women cycled through Fluvanna in her
11-plus years as chaplain there. “Seeing that God wasn’t a genie in a lamp,
some gave up when the going got tough,” she recalled. “But, Teresa never did.
Her Bible was worn out from use.”
The chaplain also cited
Lewis’ ministry to other prisoners as evidence of her new life in Christ. Even
though she was segregated from other prisoners, Litchfield said, Lewis would
attempt to comfort, pray for and share her faith with prisoners in nearby cells
by communicating through air and plumbing connections.
“As strange as it may seem,
she really was a loving and nurturing presence. Teresa grew into a woman who
inspired others to reach for their Bibles, to actively seek a spiritual
relationship and to try and be better than they were before,” Litchfield said. “Countless
women who had the chance to meet Teresa while serving time in ‘seg,’ or
cleaning the wing, or who cut her hair, passionately shared how ‘Ms Teresa’
changed them.”
During their final meeting
the day before Lewis was executed, Litchfield recalled her own anxiety as she
wondered what to say in offering comfort. Instead, the prisoner comforted her.
Litchfield recalled Lewis’
response when she asked her how she was doing: “Can’t you see the peace? The
best way I know to describe it is like the way a little child feels when they
go to bed at night knowing Mommy and Daddy are in the next room. That is how I
feel. Jesus has me.”
They shared songs. “When she
sang ‘His Eye is on the Sparrow,’ I lost it,” the chaplain said, her voice
shaky with emotion. “Standing in a prison cell, facing execution, she radiated,
‘I sing because I’m happy.’ Then, raising her arms, face lifted toward heaven,
she continued, ‘I sing because he set me free!’ At this point, I’m sobbing, so
deeply moved by her faith. Tears are streaming down my face and she reached
through the bars, cupped my face in her hand and wiped away my tears. I had
gone to comfort her, but she comforted me. She ministered to the minister. The
person who participated in those heinous crimes in 2002 — she was dead long
ago. The person who stood before me was a new creation in Christ.”
She recalled Lewis’ final
words to her: “Fierce love!” Litchfield said the two had often used that
expression. “It means the kind of love that God has for us — strong, powerful
and lasting,” the chaplain explained.
Litchfield, and her
successor at Fluvanna, Julie Perry, grieve the loss of their sister in Christ
who ministered to her fellow prisoners. But Litchfield grieves for other
reasons as well.
“What surprised me about
this process,” she said, “was the hatred that people spewed at me and at my
family for advocating for Teresa. Others were just silent, withdrawing their
friendship and support. Those of us who knew and loved Teresa on the inside and
have tried to advocate for her on the outside, all of us lost friends over
this.”
Litchfield said she’s
disappointed that some seem to believe that to advocate for Lewis’s sentence to
be commuted meant becoming an adversary of the victims’ families.
“As a member of the clergy,
my faith was shaken — not my faith in God, but my faith in people over this,”
she lamented. “Through this experience, I have seen intimately the unfair
application of the death penalty. How can a man who tomahawks four people to
death get a life sentence while my Teresa got death? I have also observed the
hatefulness of those sitting in distant seats of self-righteous judgment
against those who become entangled in the legal system’s grasp. I see clearly
that capital punishment is far more about a political agenda than it is about
justice.”
Thinking theologically,
Litchfield offered, “In my faith, Christ teaches that God can bring good out of
even the worst of circumstances. I hold to that. I am forever changed by my
experience with Teresa Lewis. I grew to love her. She taught me about the
resilience of the human spirit, about making the best out of a horrible and
tragic situation and about light in the darkest of places. Teresa showed me a
peace that surpasses understanding and love in the midst of hate.”
(EDITOR’S NOTE — White
is editor of the Virginia Baptist Religious Herald.)