FIRST EXECUTION OF A WOMAN IN NEARLY 70 YEARS

Convict Lisa Montgomery of Melvern, Kansas, who was behind the bars for kidnapping which later resulted in death will be given death punishment by lethal injection. It is scheduled for December 8 at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana. She was convicted of killing a pregnant woman and cutting the baby from the abdomen. It would be the first execution of a woman in nearly 70 years.

Federal executions have not taken place nearly in 20 years. Reports show that in the year 2004, she told her family that she was pregnant despite having undergone sterilization procedures earlier. In December 2004, she contacted Bobbie Jo Stinnett (23), who was 8 months pregnant in order to buy something which Jo had advertised online. There she put her to death, cut the baby girl from her abdomen, went home, and showed the baby as her own.

She accepted her crime, but she is also supposed to be mentally ill which makes her federal execution a profound injustice. The report also states that Lisa was sex-trafficked by her mother and gang-raped by adults which results in her mental illness as a result of post-traumatic stress disorder. If Lisa is executed, her death will be the first federal execution of a woman since 1953.

On around 2% of inmates on death row and 1% of those executed are women, according to Death Penalty Information Center. In April, there were more than 50 women on state and federal death rows, according to the NAACP Legal Defence and Education Fund. Most murders committed by women are domestic murders which are because of some domestic cause and can’t be considered under the death penalty.