US carries out its 1st execution of female inmate since 1953

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (AP) — A Kansas woman was executed Wednesday 
for strangling an expectant mother in Missouri and cutting the 
baby from her womb, the first time in nearly seven decades that 
the U.S. government has put to death a female inmate.

Lisa Montgomery, 52, was pronounced dead at 1:31 a.m. 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, 
an ardent supporter of capital punishment, resumed federal 
executions following 17 years without one.

As a curtain was raised in the execution chamber, Montgomery 
looked momentarily bewildered as she glanced at journalists 
peering at her from behind thick glass. As the execution process 
began, a woman standing over Montgomery’s shoulder leaned over, 
gently removed Montgomery’s face mask and asked her if she had 
any last words. “No,” Montgomery responded in a quiet, muffled 
voice. She said nothing else.

She tapped her fingers nervously for several seconds, a heart-
shaped tattoo on her thumb, showed no signs of distress, and 
quickly closed her eyes. As the lethal injection began, 
Montgomery kept licking her lips and gasped briefly as 
pentobarbital, a lethal drug, entered her body through IVs on 
both arms. A few minutes later, her midsection throbbed for a 
moment, but quickly stopped.

Montgomery lay on a gurney in the pale-green execution chamber, 
her glasses on and her grayish brown hair spilling over a green 
medical pillow. At 1:30 a.m., an official in black gloves with a 
stethoscope walked into the room, listened to her heart and 
chest, then walked out. She was pronounced dead a minute later.

“The craven bloodlust of a failed administration was on full 
display tonight,” Montgomery’s attorney, Kelley Henry said in a 
statement. “Everyone who participated in the execution of Lisa 
Montgomery should feel shame.”

“The government stopped at nothing in its zeal to kill this 
damaged and delusional woman,” Henry said. “Lisa Montgomery’s 
execution 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 final three federal inmates scheduled to 
die before next week’s inauguration of President-elect Joe 
Biden, who is expected to discontinue federal executions.

But a federal judge for the District of Columbia halted the 
scheduled executions later this week of Corey Johnson and Dustin 
Higgs in a ruling Tuesday. Johnson, convicted of killing seven 
people related to his drug trafficking in Virginia, and Higgs, 
convicted of ordering the murders of three women in Maryland, 
both tested positive for COVID-19 last month.

Montgomery killed 23-year-old Bobbie Jo Stinnett in the 
northwest Missouri town of Skidmore in 2004. She used a rope to 
strangle Stinnett, who was eight months pregnant, and then cut 
the baby girl from the womb with a kitchen knife. Montgomery 
took the child with her and attempted to pass the girl off as 
her own.

An appeals court granted Montgomery a stay of execution Tuesday, 
shortly after another appeals court lifted an Indiana judge’s 
ruling that found she was likely mentally ill and couldn’t 
comprehend she would be put to death. But both appeals were 
lifted, allowing the execution of the only female on federal 
death row to go forward.

As the only woman on federal death row, Montgomery had been held 
in a federal prison in Texas and was brought to Terre Haute on 
Monday night.

Montgomery’s legal team says she suffered “sexual torture,” 
including gang rapes, as a child, permanently scarring her 
emotionally and exacerbating mental-health issues that ran in 
her family.

At trial, prosecutors accused Montgomery of faking mental 
illness, noting that her killing of Stinnett was premeditated 
and included meticulous planning, including online research on 
how to perform a C-section.

Henry balked at that idea, citing extensive testing and brain 
scans that supported the diagnosis of mental illness. She said 
the issue at the core of the legal arguments are not whether she 
knew the killing was wrong in 2004 but whether she fully grasps 
why she is slated to be executed now.

U.S. District Judge James Patrick Hanlon, who had halted 
Montgomery’s execution before the stay was overturned on appeal, 
cited defense experts who alleged Montgomery suffered from 
depression, borderline personality disorder and post-traumatic 
stress disorder. Montgomery, the judge wrote, also suffered 
around the time of the killing from an extremely rare condition 
called pseudocyesis in which a woman’s false belief she is 
pregnant triggers hormonal and physical changes as if she were 
actually pregnant.

Montgomery also experiences delusions and hallucinations, 
believing God spoke with her through connect-the-dot puzzles, 
the judge said, citing defense experts. The government has 
acknowledged Montgomery’s mental issues but disputes that she 
can’t comprehend that she is scheduled for execution for killing 
another person because of them.

Details of the crime at times left jurors in tears during her 
trial.

Prosecutors told the jury Montgomery drove about 170 miles (274 
kilometers) from her Melvern, Kansas, farmhouse to the northwest 
Missouri town of Skidmore under the guise of adopting a rat 
terrier puppy from Stinnett. She strangled Stinnett performing a 
crude cesarean and fleeing with the baby.

Prosecutors said Stinnett regained consciousness and tried to 
defend herself as Montgomery cut the baby girl from her womb. 
Later that day, Montgomery called her husband to pick her up in 
the parking lot of a Long John Silver’s in Topeka, Kansas, 
telling him she had delivered the baby earlier in the day at a 
nearby birthing center.

Montgomery was arrested the next day after showing off the 
premature infant, Victoria Jo, who is now 16 years old and 
hasn’t spoken publicly about the tragedy.

Prosecutors said the motive was that Montgomery’s ex-husband 
knew she had undergone a tubal ligation that made her sterile 
and planned to reveal she was lying about being pregnant in an 
effort to get custody of two of their four children. Needing a 
baby before a fast-approaching court date, Montgomery turned her 
focus on Stinnett, whom she had met at dog shows.

Anti-death penalty groups said Trump was pushing for executions 
prior to the November election in a cynical bid to burnish a 
reputation as a law-and-order leader.

The last woman executed by the federal government was Bonnie 
Brown Heady on Dec. 18, 1953, for the kidnapping and murder of a 
6-year-old boy in Missouri.

The last woman executed by a state was Kelly Gissendaner, 47, on 
Sept. 30, 2015, in Georgia. She was convicted of murder in the 
1997 slaying of her husband after she conspired with her lover, 
who stabbed Douglas Gissendaner to death.

___

Hollingsworth reported from Kansas. Associated Press writer 
Michael Balsamo in Washington contributed to this report.

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