EXECUTION OF SOLE WOMAN ON DEATH ROW BLOCKED

A federal judge in Indiana blocked Tuesday’s scheduled execution of murderer Lisa Montgomery, the only woman on federal death row in the U.S., to allow a hearing on whether she is too mentally ill to be put to death.

It is one of three executions scheduled for the final full week of President Donald Trump’s administration. President- elect Joe Biden says he will seek to abolish the federal death penalty.

The Justice Department has appealed the Indiana ruling, which came down late on Monday.

Montgomery, 52, had been scheduled to be killed by lethal injection at 6 p. m. EST on Tuesday at a prison in Terre Haute, Indiana.

She was convicted in 2007 in Missouri for kidnapping and strangling Bobbie Jo Stinnett, then eight months pregnant. Montgomery then cut Stinnett’s fetus from the womb. The child survived. Doctors and her lawyers told Indiana court that Montgomery has brain impairments and bipolar disorder, among other mental illnesses.