FEDS EXECUTE WOMAN FOR FIRST TIME IN DECADES

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, 52, 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, she was asked if she had any last words. She responded in a quiet, muffled voice, “No,” according to a reporter who served as a media witness.

Montgomery was put to death by lethal injection of pentobarbital, a powerful barbiturate, in the U.S. Justice Department's execution chamber at its prison in Terre Haute, Indiana.