TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (AP) — A Kansas woman was executed Wednesday for strangling an expectant mother in
Missouri and cutting the baby from her womb, the first time in nearly seven decades that the U.S.
government has put to death a female inmate.
Lisa Montgomery, 52, was pronounced dead at 1:31 a.m. after receiving a lethal injection at the federal
prison complex in Terre Haute, Indiana. She was the 11th prisoner executed at the facility since July
when President Donald Trump, an ardent supporter of capital punishment, resumed federal executions
following 17 years without one.
As a curtain was raised in the execution chamber, Montgomery looked momentarily bewildered as she glanced
at journalists peering at her from behind thick glass. A woman standing over her shoulder leaned over,
gently removed Montgomery’s face mask and asked if she had any last words.
"No," Montgomery responded in a quiet, muffled voice. She said nothing else.
One of Montgomery’s lawyers, Amy Harwell, expressed surprise that Montgomery’s spiritual adviser wasn’t
inside the chamber. An official told her Montgomery didn’t want the spiritual adviser there.
"I insisted that she did — as I was present when (the spiritual adviser) discussed with her his plan
to sing ‘Jesus Loves You’ to her while the chemicals flowed," Harwell said.
Harwell said that since Montgomery was still alive and the spiritual adviser still in the building, it
should have been easy to arrange for him to enter. But the guard said it was too late to arrange.
Asked about Harwell’s account, a spokesperson for the Federal Bureau of Prisons said the spiritual
adviser was "afforded an opportunity" to be inside the chamber.
Montgomery tapped her fingers nervously for several seconds — a heart-shaped tattoo on her thumb — showed
no signs of distress, and quickly closed her eyes. As the lethal injection began, Montgomery kept
licking her lips and gasped briefly as pentobarbital, the lethal drug, entered her body through IVs on
both arms. A few minutes later, her midsection throbbed for a moment, but quickly stopped.
Montgomery lay on a gurney in the pale-green execution chamber, her glasses on and her grayish brown hair
spilling over a green medical pillow. At 1:30 a.m., an official in black gloves with a stethoscope
walked into the room, listened to her heart and chest, then walked out. She was pronounced dead a minute
later.
"The craven bloodlust of a failed administration was on full display tonight," another
Montgomery lawyer, Kelley Henry, said. "Everyone who participated in the execution of Lisa
Montgomery should feel shame."
"The government stopped at nothing in its zeal to kill this damaged and delusional woman,"
Henry added. "Lisa Montgomery’s execution was far from justice."
The family of Bobbie Jo Stinnett, the 23-year-old Montgomery killed in the northwest Missouri town of
Skidmore in 2004, declined to comment on the execution, prisons officials said.
Her execution came after hours of legal wrangling before the Supreme Court cleared the way for the
execution to move forward. Montgomery was the first of the final three federal inmates scheduled to die
before next week’s inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden, who is expected to discontinue federal
executions.
In a separate ruling Tuesday, which the government can still seek to overturn, another federal judge
halted the scheduled executions later this week of Corey Johnson and Dustin Higgs after both tested
positive for COVID-19 last month.
The men’s attorneys argued lung damage caused by the coronavirus made it more likely that the lethal
injection would cause them severe pain. If they aren’t executed before Biden becomes president, they may
never be put to death.
Montgomery 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.
An appeals court granted Montgomery a stay Tuesday, shortly after another appeals court lifted an Indiana
judge’s ruling that found she was likely mentally ill and couldn’t comprehend she would be put to death.
But both appeals were lifted, allowing the execution to go forward.
As the only woman on federal death row, Montgomery had been held in a prison in Texas and was brought to
Terre Haute on Monday night.
Montgomery’s legal team says she suffered "sexual torture" for years, 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 her killing of Stinnett was
premeditated and included meticulous planning, including online research on how to perform a C-section.
Henry balked at that idea, citing brain scans that supported the diagnosis of mental illness. She said
the issue at the core of legal arguments was not whether she knew the killing was wrong in 2004 but
whether she fully grasped why she was to be executed.
According to her lawyers, Montgomery suffered from depression, borderline personality disorder and
post-traumatic stress disorder. At around the time of the killing, they say she had a 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 experienced delusions and hallucinations, believing God spoke with her through
connect-the-dot puzzles, defense experts said.
Details of the crime at times left jurors in tears during her trial.
Prosecutors told the jury Montgomery drove about 170 miles (274 kilometers) from her Melvern, Kansas,
farmhouse to the northwest Missouri town of Skidmore under the guise of adopting a rat terrier puppy
from Stinnett. She strangled Stinnett, performed a crude cesarean and fled with the baby.
Prosecutors said Stinnett regained consciousness and tried to defend herself as Montgomery cut the baby
girl from her womb. Later that day, Montgomery called her husband from Topeka, Kansas, telling him she
had delivered the baby earlier in the day at a birthing center.
Montgomery was arrested the next day after showing off the premature infant, Victoria Jo, who is now 16
years old and hasn’t spoken publicly about the tragedy.
Prosecutors said the motive was that Montgomery’s ex-husband knew she had undergone a tubal ligation that
made her sterile and planned to reveal she was lying about being pregnant in an effort to get custody of
two of their four children. Needing a baby before a fast-approaching court date, Montgomery turned her
focus on Stinnett, whom she had met at dog shows.
The last woman executed by the federal government was Bonnie Brown Heady on Dec. 18, 1953, for the
kidnapping and murder of a 6-year-old boy in Missouri.
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Hollingsworth reported from Kansas. Associated Press writer Michael Balsamo in Washington contributed to
this report.
