LISA Montgomery’s lawyers are trying to halt her execution arguing she is brain damaged, severely mentally ill and has suffered a lifetime of sexual abuse.

The 53-year-old is due to be executed on Tuesday for strangling her friend Bobbie Jo Stinnet, then cutting her unborn daughter from her womb in 2004.

Montgomery – dubbed the Womb Raider – is currently the only woman on Federal Death row and her December execution was delayed after her lawyers caught Covid-19. 

With time running out, her legal team are asking a judge to halt her rescheduled execution, which is due to take place at the federal prison complex in Terre Haute, Indiana.

They argue executing Montgomery would violate her constitutional rights as she is not competent and can’t be put to death.

They filed a petition Friday in federal court in Indiana seeking to halt the execution.

Her lawyers have stated Montgomery was allegedly raped by her stepdad and his friends in a specially built room when she was just 11.

She is one of three inmates scheduled to be executed by the Justice Department next week, just days before President-elect Joe Biden takes the oath of office.

Biden opposes the death penalty, and his spokesman has said he’ll work to end its use.

Montgomery was convicted of killing 23-year-old Stinnett in the northwest Missouri town of Skidmore in December 2004.

She used a rope to strangle her victim, who was eight months pregnant, and then cut the baby girl from the womb with a kitchen knife and attempted to pass the girl off as her own.

Montgomery, who was 36 at the time, had met Stinnett online and pretended to be a pregnant woman named "Darlene Fischer” to bond with her.

She had researched home births and how to perform cesarean sections online before the attack.

Before dog breeder Stinnett was murdered, she had been looking forward to welcoming the birth of her first baby with her husband Zeb Stinnett.

Montgomery’s husband Kevin remains married to her Kevin remains married to her and supports her bid for clemency.

Source: Read Full Article