WASHINGTON – A federal appeals court has paved the way for the only woman on federal death row to be executed before President-elect Joe Biden takes office.
The ruling, rendered on Friday by a panel of three judges at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, concluded that a first instance judge made a mistake by vacating Lisa Montgomery’s execution date in an order last week.
US District Court Judge Randolph Moss ruled that the Department of Justice illegally rescheduled Montgomery’s execution and canceled an order by the Bureau of Prisons director that marked his death for January 12.
Montgomery had been sentenced to death at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana, in December, but Moss delayed the execution after his lawyers contracted coronavirus visiting his client and asked him to extend the deadline for filing a clemency request.
Moss concluded that, under his order, the Bureau of Prisons could not even reschedule Montgomery’s execution until at least January 1. But the appeals panel disagreed.
Meaghan VerGow, Montgomery’s lawyer, said his legal team will ask the entire appeals court to review the case and said Montgomery should not be executed on January 12.
Montgomery was convicted of the murder of Bobbie Jo Stinnett, 23, in the city of Skidmore, in northwest Missouri, in December 2004. She used a rope to strangle Stinnett, who was eight months pregnant, and then cut the girl off. uterus with a kitchen knife, officials said.
Montgomery took the child with her and tried to make it hers, prosecutors said.
But his lawyers argued that his client suffers from serious mental illness.
Biden is opposed to the death penalty and his spokesman, TJ Ducklo, said he would work to end its use. But Biden did not say whether to stop federal executions after taking office on January 20.