The only woman on the list of federal authorities sentenced to death could be executed in January

A federal appeals court paved the way for the execution of the only woman on the list of federal authorities sentenced to death, canceling an order last year, reports AFP.

The decision was made on Friday by the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, which concluded that another court was wrong in postponing Lisa Montgomery’s execution date. Judge Randolph Moss had ruled that the Justice Department had illegally rescheduled Montgomery’s execution and reversed an order from the director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons to schedule the January 12 execution.

Montgomery was originally scheduled to be executed at the federal compound in Terre Haute, Indiana, on December 8, but the execution was postponed after the woman’s attorneys hired Covid-19 to visit their client. Moss found that the Bureau of Prisons couldn’t even reschedule Montgomery’s execution until at least January 1. But the appeals court disagreed with this.

Montgomery attorney Meaghan VerGow said the team would ask for the case to be re-examined and that the woman sentenced to death should not be executed on January 12.

Montgomery was sentenced to death for killing 23-year-old Bobbie Jo Stinnett in December 2004 in Missouri. He used a rope to strangle Stinnett, who was eight months pregnant. Montgomery then pulled the baby out of the girl’s womb with a kitchen knife. Lisa Montgomery took the baby, a girl, and tried to convince the world that it was her baby.

Montgomery’s attorneys based their defense on the fact that the woman suffered from mental illness. The last woman to be executed by the United States government was Bonnie Heady, in a gas chamber in Missouri, in 1953.