The United States Department of Justice plans to carry out another federal execution of a woman for the first time in nearly seventy years. Lisa Montgomery, convicted of murder in 2004, will be put to death on December 8.
The then 36-year-old woman cut the baby from the eight-month pregnant Bobbie Jo Stinnett (23) belly with a kitchen knife. This happened at Stinnett’s home in Skidmore, Missouri. Montgomery then fled with the child to another state and passed it off as her own. The two women knew each other.
Montgomery, who was found guilty of strangling Stinnett, will be executed by lethal injection at Terre Haute federal prison in Indiana, the ministry said in a statement.
Also in Texas
Montgomery’s gruesome method is rare but not unique: Last week, a 27-year-old woman in the state of Texas also killed an eight-month-pregnant mum (22) and cut her unborn child from the abdomen. Unlike Stinnett’s baby, the stolen child died in the hospital a few hours later. Research showed that the perpetrator herself had faked a pregnancy for months.
Last execution in 1953
The last woman to be executed by the United States government was Bonnie Heady, who was put to death in a gas chamber in Missouri in 1953.
Justice also released on Friday that, on December 10, Brandon Bernard, who murdered two people with his accomplices in 1999, will be executed. The two executions are the eighth and ninth to be carried out by the federal government in 2020.
The US federal government had not carried out death sentences since 2003 but started them again in mid-July this year. Nearly 60 criminals sentenced to death are on death row for cases brought by federal justice.
