For The First Time In 70 Years, The US Will Inject A Woman Who Committed A Murder

Illustration (Emin Baycan / Unsplash)

JAKARTA - The United States (US) Department of Justice said it had scheduled the first execution of a woman in nearly 70 years. The execution will take place on December 8 for Lisa Montgomery, who was sentenced to death for the 2004 murders.

Montgomery, who was found guilty of strangling a pregnant woman in Missouri, will be executed by lethal injection in US Prison Terre Haute, Indiana. This was stated by the department in a statement.

Quoted by Reuters , Saturday, October 17th, the US government last executed a woman in 1953. The woman named Bonnie Heady, who was executed in the gas chamber at the Missouri toxic according to Death Penalty Information Center.

In 2007, the US District Court for the Western District of Missouri sentenced Montgomery to death after being found guilty of kidnapping that resulted in death. His lawyer, Kelley Henry, said that Montgomery deserved to live because he was mentally ill and abused as a child.

"Lisa Montgomery has long accepted full responsibility for her crimes, and she will never leave prison," Henry said in a statement. "But his severe mental illness and the devastating effects of his childhood trauma make executing him a deep injustice."

The Justice Department on Friday, October 16 also scheduled the execution for the man named Brandon Bernard on December 10. Bernard was found guilty of committing murder together with his accomplices in 1999. The executions of Montgomery and Bernard are the eighth and ninth executions carried out by the federal government in 2020.

Bernard's attorney, Robert Owen, said in a statement that the federal government was misleading jurors in the US District Court for the Western District of Texas. In 2000, they found Bernard guilty of murder. His decision was tainted by false testimony, Owen said.

"This evidence confirms that Bernard was not one of the 'worst of the worst' criminals on death row and that saving his life would pose no risk to anyone," said Owen.

The Trump administration ended a 17-year lull in execution. In 2019, it was announced that the Prison Bureau was returning to a new drug protocol for lethal injections. The Prison Bureau switched from a triple drug combination that was last used in 2003.

The new protocol revives long-term legal challenges for lethal injection. In August, a federal judge in Washington, DC ruled that the Department of Justice violated the Food, Drug, and Cosmetics Act by not requiring a doctor's prescription to administer highly regulated barbiturates.

But the appeals court stated that the offense itself did not represent "irreparable harm" and allowed the executions to continue.