The federal government put Lisa Montgomery to death early Wednesday morning, the first time it has executed a woman since 1953.
She was killed by lethal injection at a federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind. The 52-year-old was pronounced dead at 1:31 a.m., the Associated Press reported.
Montgomery got the death sentence in 2008 for killing a pregnant woman in 2004 and stealing her fetus. The baby survived.
Montgomery is the 11th person executed by President Trump’s administration since July. Prior to that, the federal government had not executed anyone since 2003. The administration killed Montgomery seven days before Joe Biden, an opponent of the death penalty, is scheduled to take office.
“The craven bloodlust of a failed administration was on full display tonight,” Kelley Henry, one of Montgomery’s attorneys, said in a statement.
Dozens of petitions, pleas and court challenges were made on Montgomery’s behalf, with her attorneys and supporters arguing that she was mentally incapacitated and not fit to be executed.
Three of the court challenges briefly succeeded. A federal district court in Indiana, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia and the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals all ruled in Montgomery’s favor, issuing stays of her execution.
Those rulings, however, were all overturned. The U.S. 7th Circuit Court vacated the district court’s stay, and the Supreme Court overruled the other appeals courts’ decisions, with the nation’s highest court removing the last roadblock to the execution just after midnight.
The Supreme Court’s ruling was 6-3, with Justices Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor dissenting.
“In yet another after-midnight ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court has allowed the federal government to proceed with Lisa Montgomery’s execution immediately,” tweeted anti-death penalty advocate Sister Helen Prejean. “This decision will forever be a scarlet letter for the SCOTUS — a complete failure to protect our most vulnerable citizens.”
Montgomery was convicted of traveling from her Kansas home to strangle Bobbie Jo Stinnett to death in the small northeast Missouri town of Skidmore on Dec. 16, 2004. Montgomery then cut open the 23-year-old Stinnett’s stomach and stole her baby.
The baby girl survived. She is now 16 years old and lives with her father.
Attorneys for Montgomery have argued that she suffered from a lifetime of horrific sexual abuse at the hands of her mother and stepfather, resulting in several mental health disabilities. They say her stepfather kept Montgomery as a sex slave, while her mother would allow men to rape her in exchange for home repairs.
Trump’s administration has now executed 11 people, the most of any President since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, though Roosevelt’s executions took place over eight years instead of seven months.
The previous woman executed by the federal government was Bonnie Heady, who was killed in a gas chamber on Dec. 18, 1953.
With News Wire Services
