US executes first female prisoner since 1953
A KANSAS woman has been executed for strangling an expectant mother and taking her baby, the first time in nearly seven decades the US government has put to death a female inmate.
Lisa Montgomery (52) was pronounced dead after receiving a lethal injection at the federal prison complex in Terre Haute, Indiana. She was the 11th prisoner to receive a lethal injection there since July when Donald Trump resumed federal executions following 17 years without one.
“The craven bloodlust of a failed administration was on full display tonight,” Montgomery’s lawyer Kelley Henry said in a statement. “Everyone who participated in the execution of Lisa Montgomery should feel shame.”
It came after hours of legal wrangling before the Supreme Court cleared the way for the execution.
Montgomery was the first of the final three federal inmates scheduled to die before next week’s inauguration of president-elect Joe Biden, who is expected to discontinue federal executions.
But a federal judge for the District of Columbia halted the scheduled executions later this
week of Corey Johnson and Dustin Higgs in a ruling on Tuesday. Johnson, convicted of killing seven people related to his drug trafficking in Virginia, and Higgs, convicted of ordering the murders of three women in Maryland, both tested positive for Covid-19 last month.
Montgomery killed 23-yearold Bobbie Jo Stinnett in the Missouri town of Skidmore in 2004.
She used a rope to strangle Ms Stinnett, who was eight months pregnant, and then cut the baby girl from the womb with a kitchen knife. Mon tgomery took the child with her and attempted to pass the girl off as her own.
An appeal court granted Montgomery a stay of execution on Tuesday, shortly after another appeals court lifted an Indiana judge’s ruling that found she was probably mentally ill and could not comprehend she would be put to death. Both appeals were lifted, allowing the execution of the only female on federal death row.
The last woman executed by the federal government was Bonnie Brown Heady on December 18, 1953, for the kidnapping and murder of a six-year-old boy in Missouri.