Washington – A federal appeals court has paved the way for the only woman on federal death row be carried out before President-elect Joe Biden takes office.
The ruling, delivered Friday by a panel of three judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, concluded that a lower court judge had made a mistake when he left Lisa Montgomery’s execution date in a statement last week. command.
Judge Randolph Moss of United States District Law had ruled Justice Department illegally moved Montgomery’s execution and he cleared an order from the director of the Bureau of Prisons that planned her death on January 12.
Montgomery was due to be put to death at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana in December, but Moss delayed the execution after her attorneys contracted a coronavirus while visiting their client and asked him to extend the time to file a petition for clemency.
Moss concluded that the Bureau of Prisons under his command could not even reschedule Montgomery’s execution until at least January 1. But the appeal panel disagreed.
Meaghan VerGow, a lawyer for Montgomery, said her legal team would ask the full court of appeal to review the case and said Montgomery should not be executed on January 12.
Montgomery was convicted of the murder of 23-year-old Bobbie Jo Stinnett in the town of Skidmore in northwestern Missouri in December 2004. She used a rope to strangle Stinnett, who was eight months pregnant, and then cut the girl from the womb with a kitchen. knife, the authorities said. Montgomery took the child and tried to pose as hers, prosecutors said.
AP / Nodaway-Holt high school
Montgomery’s attorneys have argued that their client is suffering from serious mental illness. Biden is against the death penalty and his spokesperson, TJ Ducklo, has said he would work to end its use. But Biden has not said whether he will stop the federal executions after he took office January 20th.