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The United States is expected to execute a federal detainee for the first time in nearly 70 years, according to the Justice Department.
The convict is Lisa Montgomery, who strangled a pregnant woman in Missouri before slitting her belly and taking her baby in 2004. Montgomery will be killed by injection in Indiana on December 8.
The last woman executed by the government of the United States was Bonnie Heidi, who also died in a gas chamber in Missouri in 1953, according to the Center for Information on the Death Penalty. Also scheduled for December is the execution of Brandon Bernard, who along with his accomplices assassinated two youth ministers in 1999.
Last year, the Trump administration, for its part, said it would continue with federal executions.
The Lisa Montgomery case
In December 2004, Montgomery drove from Kansas to Bobby Joe Steinett’s home in Missouri, supposedly to buy a puppy.
As soon as he entered the home, Montgomery attacked and began strangling Stinet, who was eight months pregnant, until the victim lost consciousness.
Then, with a kitchen knife, Montgomery slashed his victim’s abdomen, and he regained consciousness. A battle between Montgomery and Stinet followed, until the former strangled his victim to death.
“Montgomery then removed the baby from Stinet’s lifeless body, took it away, and tried to convince her that it was hers,” the indictment says.
In 2007, a jury found Montgomery guilty of federal kidnappings that led to her death and ruled unanimously in favor of the death penalty.
However, Montgomery’s lawyers say he suffered a brain injury from being beaten as a child and had mental health problems, so he should not face the death penalty.
Federal and political enforcement
Under the United States justice system, crimes can be tried in federal courts, at the national level, or in state courts, at the regional level.
Some crimes, like counterfeiting money or theft of mail, are automatically prosecuted at the federal level.
Other cases can be tried in federal courts depending on the severity of the crimes.
The death penalty was illegal at the state and federal level by a 1972 Supreme Court decision that struck down all existing statutes on the death penalty.
However, a 1976 Supreme Court ruling allowed states to reinstate the death penalty, and in 1988 the government passed legislation that made it available again at the federal level.
According to data compiled by the Center for Information on the Death Penalty, 78 people were sentenced to death in federal cases between 1988 and 2018, but only three were executed.
The Montgomery and Bernard executions will be the eighth and ninth, respectively, for this year at the federal level.
With information from the BBC
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