Feds to Execute a Woman for First Time Since 1953

The execution of women is rare.

The same month, the Trump administration ended an informal 17-year hiatus in federal executions after announcing a single-drug protocol for lethal injections rather than a three-drug combination, Reuters reported.

The justice department on Friday also scheduled a December 10. execution for Brandon Bernard, who with his accomplices murdered two youth ministers in 1999.

Montgomery's mother and sister had also been telling him she couldn't carry a child and he threatened to use it against her as he sought custody of two of the couple's four children with a hearing set for January 2005.

Lisa Montgomery, 52, will be killed by lethal injection on December 8, 2020, at the FDC in Terre Haute, Indiana.

Montgomery drove from her Kansas home to Stinnett's house in Skidmore under the guise of adopting a rat terrier puppy, prosecutors said. There, she strangled Stinnett, cut the baby from her body and fled with the child, according to court records. "Montgomery then removed the baby from Stinnett's body, took the baby with her, and attempted to pass it off as her own". The baby, Victoria Jo Stinnett, was returned to her father.

"Her conviction and sentence were affirmed on appeal, and her request for collateral relief was rejected by every court that considered it", the Justice Department said in a statement.

"The abuses Lisa endured exacerbated a genetic predisposition to mental illness inherited from both sides of her family", Ms Henry said in a statement.

"Lisa Montgomery has long accepted full responsibility for her crime, and she will never leave prison", said Henry.

However, Montgomery's lawyers have urged the government to reconsider this decision as they argued that she is mentally ill due to the terrible childhood abuse. Few actually carry out executions. Jurors unanimously recommended a death sentence.

The US Department of Justice announced on Friday that it has scheduled the first federal execution of a female inmate in nearly seven decades.

The last woman executed by the federal government was Bonnie Brown Heady.

Dunham said Heady and Ethel Rosenberg fit a pattern of women sentenced to death: Neither was the mastermind of their crimes, and neither directly killed anyone.

Many women on death row are co-defendants with a dominant male defendant, Dunham said, and most women who committed murder themselves were seriously mentally ill or under extreme mental distress at the time.

While as many as 22 USA states - including New York, Hawaii, and Minnesota - have abolished the death penalty at a regional level, it can still be awarded at a federal level in all 50 states. Almost half are in California.