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Photo courtesy of attorneys for Lisa Montgomery
Lisa Montgomery, the only woman currently on federal death row, is scheduled to receive a lethal injection on December 8. Her attorneys are in a fast-tracked fight to save their client, whose severe mental illnesses should absolve her from being “exterminated from the human race,” said one attorney on the case.
The last time the federal government executed a woman was in 1953.
Montgomery was convicted of federal kidnapping resulting in death in 2007. She strangled Bobbie Jo Stinnett, who was eight months pregnant, and used a knife to cut the fetus from Stinnett’s womb. Montgomery’s attorneys argue that she was in a dissociative state when their client took the baby, alive, home and began to care for her as if it were her own.
On October 16, the Department of Justice informed Montgomery that she had just short of eight weeks to live. “Her conviction and sentence were affirmed on appeal, and her request for collateral relief was rejected by every court that considered it,” the Justice Department said in a statement at the time.
Montgomery has been on suicide watch ever since, placed in solitary confinement where the lights are always on. She will have to travel from Texas to an Indiana men’s prison, where all federal executions are conducted. This further highlights the “reckless” actions of Attorney General William Barr, one of Montgomery’s attorneys said.
Read the full story here.
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