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The first woman to be executed by the US government in decades will be Lisa Montgomery, who strangled a pregnant woman, opened her and abducted her baby, the Justice Department said.
Montgomery is scheduled to be killed by lethal injection on December 8 at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana.
Sixteen women have been executed by state authorities since a landmark case in 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, but the federal government has not used capital punishment against a woman since 1953, when Bonnie Heady was put on camera. gas in Missouri. .
Montgomery was found guilty of killing 23-year-old Bobbie Jo Stinnett in the town of Skidmore, Missouri, in December 2004.
Montgomery traveled from the Kansas home to Ms. Stinnett’s home saying she wanted to adopt a puppy, according to the Justice Department.
When he arrived, Montgomery strangled his victim, who was eight months pregnant at the time, but failed to kill her, leaving her conscious enough to attempt to defend herself.
Montgomery then used a kitchen knife to cut the girl out of the womb and took the girl with her, then tried to say that the girl was his.
She pleaded insane when the case went to court and her lawyers claimed that she had been suffering from delusions at the time of the murder.
A statement from the Justice Department read: “In October 2007, a jury of the United States District Court for the Western District of Missouri found Montgomery guilty of federal kidnapping resulting in death and unanimously recommended the death penalty, which the court imposed.
“His conviction and sentence were upheld on appeal, and his request for collateral reparation was rejected by all the courts that considered it.”
Montgomery’s attorneys had also argued that she suffered from pseudocisis, a condition that causes a woman to falsely believe she is pregnant and show outward signs of pregnancy.
The defense argued that she was abused as a child and said that due to her severe mental illness, her delusion of being pregnant was being threatened, which caused her to enter a dream state at the time of the murder.
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But during closing arguments, US Attorney Roseann Ketchmark said the pseudocytosis claim was “voodoo science.”
She said Montgomery was scared because she believed her ex-husband would expose she was lying about her pregnancy and use it against her as she tried to win custody of two of the couple’s four children, NBC wrote at the time.
She would be the ninth federal criminal to be sentenced to death since the Justice Department resumed executions in July after a hiatus of nearly 20 years.
