Executing Lisa Montgomery Would Be One of Trump's Final Cruelties

[WhiskeyGrinder]

Content warning: This snippet and the full article have distressing details regarding the sexual abuse of children and other violence.

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/lisa-montgomery-execution/

From a young age, Lisa Marie Montgomery endured brutal physical and sexual assaults at the hands of her mother and stepfather, leading to severe mental illness. Now, 52, she is set to be the first woman executed by the federal government in 67 years.

In 2004, Montgomery contacted Bobbie Jo Stinnett, a dog breeder who was eight months pregnant. On the pretext of buying a puppy, Montgomery, who lived in Kansas, drove to Stinnett’s Missouri home. Montgomery strangled Stinnett, cut open her abdomen, and removed her fetus. She took the baby home and told her husband that she had gone into labor while shopping.

She was arrested, prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced to death in federal court. (The baby was returned to Stinnett’s husband.) Montgomery is the only woman on federal death row.

(snip)

“In death penalty cases, the death penalty is never mandatory,” Sandra Babcock, faculty director of the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty, told me. Instead, it is at the discretion of the prosecutor. In Montgomery’s case, that prosecutor was Alberto Gonzales, known for his overzealous pursuit of capital punishment, and his support for warrantless wiretapping and torture as George W. Bush’s White House counsel and, later, his attorney general.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

1. The death penalty is wrong.

Period.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

2. Agreed. Abolish it.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

3. Kick.

[mvd]

4. K&R

I am against the DP, but this case is even weak for supporters of capital punishment.