Ruling would allow execution of only woman on federal death row
The only woman on federal death row is again due to be executed before President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration after a panel of judges on Friday reversed an order that could have pushed the proceeding past the end of the Trump administration.
The decision by a three-judge federal appeals court panel had the effect of resetting Lisa Montgomery’s execution date to Jan. 12. Montgomery was convicted of killing a pregnant woman, cutting open her stomach and stealing her baby in a grisly 2004 crime.
In 2020, the Justice Department conducted a wave of federal executions, reviving a practice that was dormant for 17 years. Biden’s campaign promised to work to eliminate the death penalty at the federal level.
A lawyer for Montgomery, Meaghan VerGow, said her team will ask for a full appeals court to assess the Friday ruling, which was issued by a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Montgomery’s lawyers said their client suffers from mental illness and suffered brutal abuse at the hands of her parents.
“Given everything we know about Lisa Montgomery’s mental illness, her lifetime of horrific torture and trauma, and the many people in positions of authority who could have intervened to save her but never did, there can be no principled reason to carry out her execution,” VerGow said in a statement.
On Christmas Eve, U.S. District Court Judge Randolph Moss ruled that the Jan. 12 date was invalid because a stay order, issued after Montgomery’s attorneys tested positive for COVID-19, remained in force. She was previously scheduled for a Dec. 8 execution, but the date was moved to provide time for the lawyers to recover and prepare a request for clemency.
In the order on Friday, the panel of judges set a Saturday deadline for any petition requesting a rehearing.
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