JANUARY 12, 2021: FIRST WOMAN TO FACE DEATH PENALTY IN U.S
Lisa Montgomery strangled a pregnant woman in Missouri before cutting out and kidnapping the baby in 2004. If the execution goes ahead, she will be the first female federal inmate to be put to death in almost 70 years.
Lisa Montgomery strangled a pregnant woman in Missouri before cutting out and kidnapping the baby in 2004. If the execution goes ahead, she will be the first female inmate to be put to death in almost 70 years.
Montgomery's execution date was originally set for last month but a stay was put in place after her attorneys contracted Covid-19. It was then rescheduled for 12 January by the Justice Department. But Montgomery's lawyers argued that the date could not be set while a stay was in place.
A court sided with her attorneys, stopping an order from the director of the Bureau of Prisons scheduling her death. The last woman to be executed by the US government was Bonnie Heady, who died in a gas chamber in Missouri in 1953, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Federal executions had been on pause for 17 years before President Donald Trump ordered them to resume earlier last year.If the remaining executions go ahead, Trump will have overseen the most executions by a US president in more than a century.
Montgomery's execution date is just days before President-elect Joe Biden takes office. Mr Biden, who for decades was a fierce supporter of the death penalty as a Delaware senator, has now said he will seek to end federal executions once he takes office.
According to data collected by the Death Penalty Information Center, 78 people were sentenced to death in federal cases between 1988 and 2018 but only three were executed.
