Tag Archives: Lisa Montgomery

U.S. government executes woman for first time in nearly seven decades

By Bhargav Acharya and Jonathan Allen

(Reuters) – The United States executed Lisa Montgomery, a convicted murderer and the only woman on federal death row, early on Wednesday, making her the first female prisoner to be executed by the federal government since 1953.

Montgomery was convicted in 2007 in Missouri of kidnapping and strangling Bobbie Jo Stinnett, then eight months pregnant. Montgomery cut Stinnett’s fetus from the womb and tried to pass off the child as her own.

After Montgomery was strapped to a gurney in the government’s death chamber, a female executioner asked if she had any last words. Montgomery responded in a quiet, muffled voice, “No,” according to a reporter who served as a media witness.

Federal judges in multiple courts had delayed her execution to allow for hearings on whether she was too mentally ill to understand her punishment and whether the government had given insufficient notice of her execution date under law.

But around midnight the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority summarily dismissed the final obstacles, and Montgomery was pronounced dead at 1:31 a.m. EST (0631 GMT) at the Department of Justice’s execution chamber at a prison in Terre Haute, Indiana. Some of Stinnett’s relatives attended as witnesses but declined to speak with the media, the Justice Department said.

Montgomery’s execution was opposed by United Nations human rights experts, several dozen former prosecutors, and multiple groups against violence to women, prompting debate over the role past trauma can play in some of the most horrific crimes prosecuted by the justice system.

Montgomery was the 11th person executed on federal death row since the practice was resumed last year under President Donald Trump, a Republican and an outspoken proponent of capital punishment. Before Trump, there had been only three federal executions since 1963.

Kelley Henry, Montgomery’s lawyer, called the execution “vicious, unlawful, and unnecessary exercise of authoritarian power.” Some doctors who examined Montgomery testified that her brain was structurally damaged and she suffered from psychosis, auditory hallucinations and other mental illness, exacerbated by the abuse and rapes she suffered at the hands of her mother and stepfather.

“No one can credibly dispute Mrs. Montgomery’s longstanding debilitating mental disease — diagnosed and treated for the first time by the Bureau of Prisons’ own doctors,” Henry said in a statement. “Our Constitution forbids the execution of a person who is unable to rationally understand her execution.”

Until this week, she had been held for many years at FMC Carswell in Texas, a federal hospital prison for female inmates with mental illness.

It was one of three executions the U.S. Department of Justice had scheduled for the final full week of Trump’s administration. Two other executions scheduled for Thursday and Friday have been delayed, for now at least, by a federal judge in Washington, to allow the condemned murderers to recover from COVID-19.

(Reporting by Bhargav Acharya and Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru and Jonathan Allen in New York; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell and Howard Goller)

U.S. resets execution date for only woman on federal death row

By Jonathan Allen

(Reuters) – The U.S. Department of Justice has rescheduled the execution of Lisa Montgomery, a convicted murderer and the only woman on federal death row, to take place on Jan. 12, a few days before Joe Biden is due to be inaugurated as president of the United States.

Last week, a federal judge temporarily delayed the execution of Montgomery, which had been set for Dec. 8, to allow her two lead lawyers time to recover from COVID-19 in order to file a clemency petition asking President Donald Trump to commute the sentence to life in prison.

In his order, Judge Randolph Moss of the U.S. District Court in Washington ordered the Justice Department to not execute Montgomery before Dec. 31. The Justice Department filed a notice of the new Jan. 12 execution date with the court on Monday.

Trump’s administration resumed carrying out executions earlier this year after a 17-year hiatus, although a dwindling number of state governments have continued to do so throughout.

The federal government executed eight convicted murderers this year, the most federal executions in a single year since at least the 1920s, according to a database compiled by the Death Penalty Information Center.

Montgomery would be the first women to be executed by the federal government since 1953.

Besides that of Montgomery, Trump’s administration has scheduled four other executions before the Jan. 20 inauguration following the Nov. 3 elections.

Biden, once a supporter of capital punishment, has said he will work as president to end the federal death penalty.

Montgomery, 52, was convicted in 2007 in Missouri for strangling Bobbie Jo Stinnett, who was eight months pregnant. Montgomery butchered Stinnett to cut the fetus from her womb. The child survived.

Montgomery’s lawyers say Montgomery admits her guilt but deserves clemency because she has long suffered severe mental illness, exacerbated by being gang raped by her stepfather and his friends during an abusive childhood.

Montgomery is being held at the Federal Medical Center in Carswell, Texas, a prison for inmates with mental illness. Her lawyers say that she has been dressed in a “suicide smock” and given only a crayon with which to write.

“Now, despite Lisa’s deteriorating mental health and a much deeper understanding of the trauma she endured, the government plans to kill her,” Sandra Babcock, one of Montgomery’s attorneys, said in a statement. “No other woman has been executed for a similar crime, because most prosecutors have recognized that it is inevitably the product of trauma and mental illness.”

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen in New York; Editing by Alexandra Hudson)

Federal judge stays execution of lone woman on federal death row

By Sarah N. Lynch

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A federal judge on Thursday agreed to briefly stay the execution of Lisa Montgomery, the lone woman on federal death row, after her attorneys fell ill with COVID-19 and were unable to file a timely clemency petition on her behalf.

U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss said that though his order will temporarily stay the execution, now slated for Dec. 8, it will “not enjoin any government official, including the President,” from taking any adverse action on her request for a reprieve.

He added that if her lawyers are not able to file her clemency request by Dec. 24, then they must have other counsel appointed on her behalf.

His ruling came after a hearing earlier this week, where Moss had at times appeared skeptical on whether to grant Montgomery more time to petition for clemency.

Montgomery, now 52, was convicted in 2007 of kidnapping and strangling Bobbie Jo Stinnett, who was eight months pregnant. Montgomery then cut the baby, who survived the attack, out from the womb.

Both her lead clemency attorneys, Kelley Henry and Amy Harwell, have been too sick with COVID-19 to prepare and file her petition.

Her lawyers had said that Montgomery has long suffered from severe mental illness and was the victim of sexual assault, including gang rape.

“The district court’s ruling gives Lisa Montgomery a meaningful opportunity to prepare and present a clemency application after her attorneys recover from COVID,” said Sandra Babcock, one of her attorneys, in a statement in response to Thursday’s ruling.

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Aurora Ellis)