Lawyers for Lisa Montgomery, slated to be the first woman executed by the US federal government in decades, on Tuesday sought clemency from US President Donald Trump, saying that she was profoundly mentally ill when she committed murder in 2004.
In a last-ditch effort to prevent her execution going ahead on Tuesday next week, they told Trump in a letter that Montgomery was born brain-damaged and endured a life of extreme abuse before committing her crime.
“Broken before she was born, Lisa Montgomery’s life was filled with torture, terror, failure, and betrayal,” they wrote to Trump. “You alone have the power to temper Justice with Mercy.”
Photo: Reuters
“You alone have the power to send a message to the thousands of women who have been the victim of childhood rape and trafficking that their pain matters — that they matter — that their lives have value,” they wrote.
They requested Trump commute her death sentence to life in prison without parole.
Montgomery, 52, was sentenced to death for the murder of a pregnant, 23-year-old Missouri dog breeder, Bobbie Jo Stinnett.
Under the guise of buying a puppy, Montgomery went to Stinnett’s home, where she strangled her to death, and cut the baby from her body.
She then traveled back to her home in Kansas and told her unsuspecting husband that the baby was hers.
Montgomery’s lawyers do not contest the facts, but say her defense was mishandled and the court ignored her history of mental illness.
The last woman to be executed by the US federal government was murderer Bonnie Heady in 1953, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Montgomery is one of 13 federal death-row inmates whose executions the US Department of Justice decided last year to go through with after a 17-year halt on carrying out death sentences.
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