“More than 1,000 advocates, including current and former prosecutors organized through Cornell Law School, signed letters asking President Trump to stop [Lisa] Montgomery’s execution and [commute] her sentence to life without parole.” – Fox News
Nov 16, 2020
By Danielle Wallace | Fox News
Two lawyers representing Lisa Montgomery, the first woman to face the federal death penalty in nearly 70 years, have moved to delay her execution because they contracted the coronavirus while working on her case, according to a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
The lawsuit blames Attorney General William Barr for scheduling the execution during a pandemic.
Montgomery, who was convicted 13 years ago of strangling an 8-month pregnant woman and cutting the baby from the womb to pass off as her own, is to be executed by lethal injection on Dec. 8 at the U.S. Penitentiary Terre Haute, Indiana. [The baby survived.]
Barr directed the Federal Bureau of Prisons on Oct. 16 to set a date for the execution.
Since then, lawyers Amy Harwell and Kelley Henry traveled at least twice from Tennessee to Texas, where Montgomery is held at FMC Carswell in Fort Worth.
“Each round trip involved two plane flights, transit through two airports, hotel stays, and interaction with dozens of people including airline attendants, car rental employees, passengers, and prison guards,” according to the motion filed last Thursday.
According to the filing, Montgomery’s lawyers are unable to represent her “through no fault of their own,” and, if Barr had not taken action during the middle of the pandemic, “counsel would not have been stricken with the disease that is ravaging the country.”
Also because of COVID-19, “experts familiar with her case cannot assess her mental state and therefore cannot participate in the clemency process.”
Both lawyers were working remotely before Barr set the execution date, according to court documents.
The lawsuit also argues that Montgomery has “several mental disabilities that frequently cause her to lose touch with reality,” which have gotten worse during the pandemic …
Murder of Bobbie Jo Stinnett
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Bobbie Jo Stinnett (December 4, 1981 – December 16, 2004) was a pregnant 23-year-old American woman found murdered in her home in Skidmore, Missouri.
The perpetrator, Lisa Marie Montgomery, then age 36, was convicted of strangling Stinnett from behind and then removing Stinnett’s unborn child, eight months into gestation, from her womb. The child was later safely recovered by authorities.
Montgomery is currently incarcerated on death row; she is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on December 8, 2020, at the United States Penitentiary, Terre Haute.
She will be the first federal female inmate in 67 years to be executed by the U.S. federal government, and is one of the 55 women on death row in the United States.
Investigation results
Bobbie Jo Stinnett was eight months pregnant with her first child. She and her husband ran a dog-breeding business from their residence. Montgomery met Stinnett online in a Rat Terrier chatroom called “Ratter Chatter”.
It is known that Stinnett was expecting the arrival in Skidmore, Missouri, of prospective buyers for a terrier at about the time of her murder.
Montgomery told Stinnett that she, too, was pregnant, leading to the two women chatting online and exchanging e-mails about their pregnancies.
Additionally, there was no sign of forced entry. Authorities now believe that Montgomery, posing as customer “Darlene Fischer”, arranged to visit Stinnett’s house on that day.
On December 16, 2004, Montgomery entered the house, strangled Stinnett, and cut the premature infant from her womb.
It was speculated that Montgomery’s motivation stemmed from a miscarriage she may have suffered and subsequently concealed from her family.
How or whether Montgomery had recently become pregnant is unclear. Montgomery’s former husband has since told authorities that she underwent a tubal ligation in 1990, and that she had a history of falsely telling acquaintances that she was pregnant.
The case
Stinnett was discovered by her mother, Becky Harper, in a pool of blood about an hour after the assault. Harper immediately called 9-1-1. Harper described the wounds inflicted upon her daughter as appearing as if her “stomach had exploded”. Attempts by paramedics to revive Stinnett were unsuccessful, and she was pronounced dead at St. Francis Hospital in Maryville.
The next day, December 17, 2004, Montgomery was arrested at her farmhouse in Melvern, Kansas, where the newborn had been claimed as her own and was recovered. The day-old baby was placed in the custody of her father.
The quick recovery and capture was attributed to, in part, the use of forensic computer investigation, which tracked Montgomery and Stinnett’s online communication with one another. Both bred rat terriers and may have attended dog shows together.
The later investigation was also aided by the issuance of an AMBER alert to enlist the public’s help. The alert was initially denied because it had never been used in an unborn case and thus there was no description of the victim. Eventually, after intervention by Congressman Sam Graves, it was implemented.
When authorities went to speak to Montgomery they found her in the living room holding the baby and watching television with the AMBER alert flashing on the screen. DNA testing was used to confirm the infant’s identity.
Perpetrator
- Born Lisa Marie Montgomery
- Born February 27, 1968, Melvern, Kansas, U.S.
- Criminal status: Incarcerated on death row at Federal Medical Center, Carswell
- Criminal charge: Kidnapping resulting in death
- Date apprehended December 17, 2004
- Penalty Death via lethal injection, scheduled for December 8 2020 at the United States Penitentiary, Terre Haute
Lisa Marie Montgomery was born February 27, 1968, and resided in Melvern, Kansas, at the time of the murder.
She was raised in an abusive home where it is claimed she was raped by her stepfather for many years. She sought escape mentally by drinking alcohol. When Montgomery was 14, her mother discovered the abuse, but reacted by threatening her daughter with a gun.
She tried to escape this situation by marrying at the age of 18, but both the first marriage and a second marriage resulted in further abuse.
Montgomery had four children before she underwent a tubal ligation in 1990. Montgomery falsely claimed to be pregnant several times after the procedure, according to both her first and second spouses.
Trial and ruling
Montgomery was charged with the federal offense of “kidnapping resulting in death”, a crime established by the Federal Kidnapping Act of 1932, and described in Title 18 of the United States Code. If convicted, she faced a sentence of life imprisonment or the death penalty.
At a pre-trial hearing, a neuropsychologist testified that head injuries, which Montgomery had sustained some years before, could have damaged the part of the brain that controls aggression. During her trial in federal court, her defense attorneys, led by Frederick Duchardt, asserted that she had pseudocyesis, a mental condition that causes a woman to falsely believe she is pregnant and exhibit outward signs of pregnancy.
According to The Guardian, Duchardt attempted to follow this line of defense only one week before the trial began, after being forced to abandon a contradictory argument that Stinnett was murdered by Montgomery’s brother Tommy, who had an alibi. As a result, Montgomery’s family refused to co-operate with Duchardt and describe her background to the jury.
V. S. Ramachandran and MD William Logan gave expert testimony that Montgomery had pseudocyesis in addition to depression, borderline personality disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Ramachandran testified that Montgomery’s stories about her actions fluctuated because her delusional state fluctuated and that she was unable to appreciate the nature and quality of her acts.
Both federal prosecutor Roseann Ketchmark and the opposing expert witness forensic psychiatrist Park Dietz disagreed strongly with the diagnosis of pseudocyesis.
On October 22, 2007, jurors found Montgomery guilty rejecting the defense claim Montgomery was delusional. On October 26, the jury recommended a death sentence. Judge Gary A. Fenner formally sentenced Montgomery to death. On April 4, 2008, a judge upheld the jury’s recommendation for death.
However, Duchardt’s aforementioned pseudocyesis defense, Montgomery’s past trauma and separate diagnoses of mental illness were not fully revealed to the jury until after her conviction, by her appeals team.
This led critics, including the Guardian journalist David Rose, to argue that Duchardt provided an incompetent legal defense for Montgomery. Fenner required Duchardt to be cross-examined in November 2016. Duchardt rejected all criticism and defended his conduct.
Aftermath
On March 19, 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court denied Montgomery’s certiorari petition. Montgomery, who is registered for the Federal Bureau of Prisons under number 11072-031, was as of 2017 incarcerated at Federal Medical Center, Carswell in Fort Worth, Texas, where she will remain until she is transferred to the site of her execution. She is currently the only woman with a federal death sentence incarcerated at that facility.
Experts who examined Montgomery post-conviction concluded that by the time of her crime she had long been living with psychosis, bipolar disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorders. Montgomery falsely claimed to be pregnant several times after tubal ligation. She was said to be often disassociated from reality and to have permanent brain damage from numerous beatings at the hands of her parents and spouses.
Montgomery is scheduled to be executed on December 8, 2020, by lethal injection at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana.
Only three women have been executed by the U.S. federal government: in 1865, Mary Surratt, by hanging; in 1953, Ethel Rosenberg, by electric chair; and – also in 1953 – Bonnie Heady by gas chamber. Heady grew up in Clearmont, Missouri, also in Nodaway County, 20 miles north of Skidmore; she is buried in Clearmont.
Popular culture
The case was described in the books, Baby Be Mine, by author Diane Fanning and Murder in the Heartland by M. William Phelps. This case was featured in an episode of the true crime series Deadly Women titled “Fatal Obsession”. The case was also featured in the fifth episode of the documentary series No One Saw a Thing that aired on the Sundance Channel on August 29, 2019.
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