A judge may force the Trump administration’s Justice Department to schedule the only woman in the federal death row execution for when she takes office as President-elect Biden.
U.S. District Court Judge Randolph Moss told attorneys representing Lisa Montgomery and the Justice Department that he was abandoning an order from the director of the Prisons Office to reschedule the January 12 execution.
Moss set that date in November, after Montgomery’s lawyers contracted coronavirus and asked for an extension to file a clemency petition.
According to the federal judge, the problem was that rescheduling was done while there was a stay, which is prohibited.
“The Court accordingly concludes that the director’s order setting a new execution date while the Court’s stay was in force“ was not in accordance with the law, ”Moss wrote to both councils.
Montgomery was convicted and sentenced to death in 2007 for the 2004 murder of 23-year-old Bobbie Jo Stinnett, who was 8 months pregnant at the time.
Montgomery strangled Stinnett with a rope, before grabbing a kitchen knife and cutting and kidnapping the baby. That child survived and was returned to his father.
Montgomery has bipolar disorder, temporal lobe epilepsy, complex post-traumatic stress disorder, dissociative disorder, psychosis, traumatic brain injury, and most likely fetal alcohol syndrome.
She was 13 when she began being raped by her stepfather. When her mother was caught at the age of 14 being sexually abused by the man, according to lawyers’ appeal files obtained by The Guardian, her mother had a gun to her head.
Montgomery’s lawyers want President Trump to commute his death sentence to life in prison, though it’s unclear if the appeal is being examined.
“Given the severity of Ms. Montgomery’s mental illness, the sexual and physical torture she suffered throughout her life, and the connection between her trauma and the facts of her crime, we appeal to President Trump to grant her pity and we commute his sentence to life imprisonment, “lawyer Sandra Babcock said in a statement.
Biden promised to end the death penalty, but it is unclear what he will do about the executions planned by the previous administration.
With publishing cables