US executes female prisoner
TERRE HAUTE: The United States government executed convicted murderer Lisa Montgomery, the only woman on federal death row, yesterday, after the Supreme Court overturned a stay.
It marked the first time a female prisoner had been executed since 1953 in the US.
Challenges were fought in multiple courts on whether to allow execution of Montgomery (52), who was put to death by lethal injection yesterday in the Justice Department’s execution chamber in Terre Haute, Indiana.
Her lawyer, Kelley Henry, called the execution a ‘‘vicious, unlawful, and unnecessary exercise of authoritarian power’’.
‘‘Noone 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.
Montgomery was convicted in 2007 of killing Bobbie Jo Stinnett, then eight months pregnant. Montgomery cut Stinnett’s foetus out. The child survived.
Some of Stinnett’s relatives witnessed Montgomery’s execution.
Asked by an executioner if she had any last words, Montgomery quietly said ‘‘no’’, a reporter serving as a media witness said.
Federal executions had been on hold for 17 years and only three men had been executed by the federal government since 1963 until the practice resumed last year under President Donald Trump, whose support for capital punishment long predates his entry into politics.