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AAside from the drama in Washington, a Kansas woman was executed for strangling an expectant mother in Missouri and ripping the baby from her womb, the first time in nearly seven decades that the US government has executed a female inmate.
Lisa Montgomery, 52, was pronounced dead at 1:31 am local time (6:31 am GMT) after receiving a lethal injection at the federal prison complex in Terre Haute, Indiana. She was the 11th prisoner to receive a lethal injection there since July, when President Donald Trump, a fervent supporter of capital punishment, resumed federal executions after 17 years without one.
When a curtain was lifted in the execution chamber, Montgomery looked momentarily puzzled as he looked at the journalists watching from behind thick glass. As the execution process began, a woman on Montgomery’s shoulder leaned over, removed Montgomery’s face mask, and asked if he had any last words. “No,” Montgomery replied in a low, muffled voice. She didn’t say anything else.
He touched his fingers nervously for several seconds, with a heart-shaped tattoo on his thumb, but otherwise showed no signs of distress and quickly closed his eyes.
“The cowardly bloodlust of a failed administration manifested itself tonight,” Montgomery’s attorney, Kelley Henry, said in a statement. “Everyone who participated in the execution of Lisa Montgomery should be ashamed.”
“The government stopped at nothing in its zeal to kill this damaged and delusional woman,” Henry said. “The execution of Lisa Montgomery was far from justice.”
It 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 last three federal prisoners scheduled to die before President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration next week, who is expected to suspend federal executions.
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