Lisa Montgomery is now the fourth federal death row inmate to have an execution date scheduled in the final five weeks of President Donald Trump's term. The Department of Justice rescheduled Lisa Montgomery's execution for January 12th, 2021.
Montgomery was convicted of murdering a Missouri woman in 2004 and cutting her baby out of her womb. She would be the first female prisoner executed by the federal government since 1953.
Montgomery's original execution date of December 8th was postponed after her attorneys contracted the COVID-19 virus. Although most federal death row inmates are housed at the United States Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, Montgomery is being held at the Federal Medical Center in Carswell, Texas.
On November 19th, D.C. District Judge Randolph Moss ordered Montgomery's execution not take place before December 31st, 2020.
“Mrs. Montgomery’s mental health has been deteriorating since the government first set her execution date. She is being held under extremely harsh conditions, dressed in a “suicide smock,” given only a crayon to write with, and threatened with the loss of her underwear if she exhibits any distress. Even as her attorneys are still recovering from severe COVID-19, they are trying to monitor her fragile mental state and prepare a clemency petition that provides a full picture of how her lifetime of suffering physical, emotional, and sexual abuse – including being trafficked by her own mother and repeatedly gang raped – resulted in the dissociative disorder that led to her commission of the crime,” Montgomery’s attorney Sandra Babcock said in a statement.
Barring clemency, Montgomery will be the first of three inmates executed in a five-day span. Corey Johnson will be executed Jan. 14, 2021, Dustin Higgs' execution is scheduled for a day later on Jan. 15th.
The Department of Justice scheduled a pair of executions in December, Brandon Bernard on the 10th and Alfred Bourgeois on the 11th.
