On Tuesday, hours before she was scheduled to die, Judge James Hanlon of the US District Court for the Southern District of Indiana has halted the execution of Lisa Montgomery, CNN reports. Judge Hanlon said that the stay was needed to allow the court to conduct a hearing to determine Montgomery’s competence to be executed. A date for the hearing has not been determined. The US Department of Justice has appealed the ruling. This is a separate matter from the stay of execution that had been granted last year, when Montgomery's attorneys contracted the Coronavirus.
Montgomery’s attorneys argued that due to what they say is her severe mental illness, she does not understand the basis of her execution, and to execute her would be a violation of the Eighth Amendment.
In 2008, Montgomery was convicted and sentenced to death by a Missouri jury for the 2004 murder of Bobbie Jo Stinnett of Skidmore, cutting out her fetus, and kidnapping it. The baby survived. Montgomery drove 170 miles to Stinnett’s home in Skidmore under the guise of adopting a rat terrier puppy. She strangled Stinnett with a rope, performed a cesarean section, and passed off the baby as her own. She would be the first woman executed by the Federal Government in 67 years.
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