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A US appeals court paved the way for the execution of the only woman on federal death row before President-elect Joe Biden took office.
The ruling, released Friday by a three-judge panel of the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals, found a lower court judge erred in setting aside Lisa Montgomery’s execution date in an order last week.
U.S. District Court Judge Randolph Moss had ruled that the Justice Department illegally postponed Montgomery’s execution and he quashed an order from the Director of the Prisons Office fixing his death on January 12.
Montgomery was due to be put to death by lethal injection at the federal correctional complex in Terre Haute, Indiana, in December, but Moss delayed the execution after his lawyers contracted coronavirus visiting their client and asked him to extend the deadline to file leniency. petition.
Moss concluded that, under his order, the Prisons Office could not even postpone Montgomery’s execution until at least January 1. But the appeal committee disagreed.
Meaghan VerGow, an attorney for Montgomery, said her legal team will ask the full appeals court to review the case and said Montgomery is not expected to be executed on January 12.
Montgomery was convicted of the murder of Bobbie Jo Stinnett, 23, in the town of Skidmore, northwest Missouri, in December 2004.
She used a rope to strangle Stinnett, who was eight months pregnant, then cut the baby girl from the womb with a kitchen knife, authorities said. Montgomery took the child with her and attempted to impersonate the girl as his own, prosecutors said.
Montgomery’s legal team argued that she suffered from serious mental illnesses. One of her attorneys, Sandra Babcock, said in an earlier statement: “Given the severity of Ms Montgomery’s mental illness, the sexual and physical torture she has endured throughout her life and the link between his trauma and the facts of his crime, we call on President Trump to show him his mercy and commute his sentence to life imprisonment.
Biden opposes the death penalty and his spokesperson TJ Ducklo has said he will work to end its use. But Biden has not said whether he will end federal executions after he takes office on January 20.
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