For first time since ’53, U.S. executes a woman
TERRE HAUTE, Ind. — A Kansas woman was executed Wednesday for strangling an expectant mother in Missouri and cutting the baby from her womb, the first time in nearly seven decades that the U.S. government has put to death a female inmate.
Lisa Montgomery, 52, was pronounced dead at 1:31 a.m. after receiving a lethal injection at the federal prison complex here. She was the 11th prisoner executed at the facility since July, when President Donald Trump, an ardent supporter of capital punishment, resumed federal executions after 17 years without one.
As a curtain was raised in the execution chamber, Montgomery looked momentarily bewildered as she glanced at journalists peering at her from behind thick glass. A woman standing over her shoulder leaned over, gently removed Montgomery’s face mask and asked if she had any last words.
“No,” Montgomery responded in a quiet, muffled voice. She said nothing else.
In 2004, Montgomery used a rope to strangle 23-year-old Bobbie Jo Stinnett, who was eight months pregnant, then cut the baby girl from the womb with a kitchen knife. Montgomery took the child with her and tried to pass the girl off as her own.
Despite the brutality of the crime, another of her lawyers argued that her execution was unjust.
“The craven bloodlust of a failed administration was on full display tonight,” Kelley Henry said. “Everyone who participated in the execution of Lisa Montgomery should feel shame.”
Stinnett’s family declined to comment on the execution, prisons officials said.
Montgomery’s execution came after hours of legal wrangling before the Supreme Court cleared the way for the execution to move forward. Montgomery was the first of the final three federal inmates scheduled to die before next week’s inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden, who’s expected to discontinue federal executions.