In 2004, Lisa Montgomery murdered a pregnant woman, Bobbie Jo Stinnett, before cutting her open to abduct the child inside her womb. She kidnapped the newborn and fled from Missouri to Kansas before being caught and returning the infant child to its father.
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Execution date delayed due to COVID-19
Two of her attorneys were struck by COVID, and as a result, has had her execution date delayed but Donald Trump has plans of executing as many people on death row as possible before leaving office.
Her execution date is set to be on January 12, 2021 just eight days before Joe Biden, an anti-capital punishment proponent, is sworn into office.
Sandra Babcock, who has previously entered declarations to the court on the case, reports that the delay has bought Montgomery's attorneys more time to work up a clemency application:
Mrs. Montgomery's case presents compelling grounds for clemency, including her history as a victim of gang rape, incest and child sex trafficking, as well as her severe mental illnessIt is difficult to grasp the extremity of the horrors Lisa suffered from her earliest childhood. No one intervened to help Lisa, though many knew what was happening to her.
If the appeal to clemency is granted her sentence would be commuted to life in prison.
The last other woman to have been executed
Montgomery is currently the only woman on federal death row and will be the first woman to be executed in the US since 1953.
On December 18 1953, Bonnie Brown Heady was the last woman to be put to death by the US government for having kidnapped and killed the six-year-old son of a wealthy Kansas City couple.
