Court clears way for first federal execution of female inmate in 67 years

Montgomery’s lawyers have long argued she is mentally ill and cannot comprehend she would be put to death. File picture: iStock

The US Supreme Court has cleared the way for the Justice Department to carry out the first execution of a female death-row inmate in almost seven decades following a flurry of legal rulings.

The court handed down its decision just after midnight on Wednesday, allowing the federal Bureau of Prisons to proceed with the execution of Lisa Montgomery.

Montgomery was convicted of killing 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.

Her execution comes as another court halted two other executions set for later this week because the inmates tested positive for Covid-19.

The three executions were to be the last before President-elect Joe Biden, an opponent of the federal death penalty, is sworn-in next week.

Now it is unclear how many additional executions there will be under President Donald Trump, who resumed federal executions in July after a 17-year pause.

Ten federal inmates have since been put to death.

Montgomery’s lawyers have long argued she is mentally ill and cannot comprehend she would be put to death.

Several courts had issued injunctions, but they were all later lifted by appeals courts or the Supreme Court.

Separately, a federal judge for the US District of Columbia halted the scheduled executions later this week of Corey Johnson and Dustin Higgs in a ruling on 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.

Delays of any of this week’s scheduled executions beyond Mr Biden’s inauguration next Tuesday would likely mean they will not happen anytime soon, or ever, since a Biden administration is expected to oppose carrying out federal death sentences.

One of Montgomery’s lawyers, Kelley Henry, told The Associated Press on Tuesday morning that her client arrived at the Terre Haute facility late Monday night from a Texas prison and that, because there are no facilities for female inmates, she was being kept in a cell in the execution-chamber building itself.

“I don’t believe she has any rational comprehension of what’s going on at all,” Ms Henry said.

Montgomery has done needle-point in prison, making gloves, hats and other knitted items as gifts for her lawyers and others, Henry said.

She has not been able to continue that hobby or read since her glasses were taken away from her out of concern she could kill herself.

“All of her coping mechanisms were taken away from her when they locked her down” in October after she was informed she had an execution date, Ms Henry said.

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 Ms Stinnett was premeditated and included meticulous planning, including online research on how to perform a C-section.

Ms Henry balked at that idea, citing extensive testing and brain scans that supported the diagnosis of mental illness.

“You can’t fake brain scans that show the brain damage,” she said.

Ms Henry 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.

In his ruling on a stay, US district judge James Patrick Hanlon in Terre Haute cited defence 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 defence experts.

“The record before the Court contains ample evidence that Ms Montgomery’s current mental state is so divorced from reality that she cannot rationally understand the government’s rationale for her execution,” the judge said.

The government has acknowledged Montgomery’s mental issues but disputes that she cannot comprehend that she is scheduled for execution for killing another person because of them.

Anti-death penalty groups said Mr 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 December 18, 1953, for the kidnapping and murder of a six-year-old boy in Missouri.

The last woman executed by a state was Kelly Gissendaner, 47, on September 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.