The lawyers of the first woman to face a federal execution since 1953 have asked a judge to delay her execution because they contracted the coronavirus while working on her case.
Lisa Montgomery was found guilty of strangling a pregnant woman from Missouri in 2004 and taking her unborn baby, who survived, according to NBC News. The last woman to be executed by the federal government was Bonnie Heady, who, along with her husband, murdered a child they kidnapped for $600,000 ransom, according to the FBI.
Montgomery’s execution is currently scheduled for Dec. 8 at the Terre Haute Federal Correctional Complex. In filing their request for a delay, Montgomery’s lawyers, Amy Harwell and Kelley Henry, said Attorney General William Barr did not provide any notice before he scheduled the execution.
“On October 16, 2020, Defendant Barr announced — with no notice to Mrs. Montgomery’s lawyers — that he had scheduled her execution for December 8, 2020,” they wrote in the filing. Working her case after Barr’s announcement involved several trips from Nashville, Tennessee, to the Federal Medical Center in Carswell, Texas, where Montgomery is being held.
The lawyers, who now have to quarantine, argue that because of Montgomery’s “several mental disabilities that frequently cause her to lose touch with reality … it is vital that counsel be able to meet with Mrs. Montgomery in person to evaluate her mental status.” Now that they are no longer able to work with Montgomery in person until the end of their quarantine, the lawyers argued that “Barr’s setting of Mrs. Montgomery’s execution date during the height of the pandemic has therefore interfered with Mrs. Montgomery’s statutory right to counsel.”
“Both Harwell and Henry are virtually bed-ridden,” the filing reads. “They both have debilitating fatigue that prevents them from working on Mrs. Montgomery’s clemency application. They have a range of other symptoms as well, including headaches, chills, sweats, gastrointestinal distress, inability to focus, and impaired thinking and judgment.”
A hearing in district court is scheduled for Monday so both sides can make their arguments.
More than 1,000 advocated have signed letters and sent them to various figures in the federal government, arguing that Montgomery’s mental illness, history of being abused, and her experience being sexually trafficked as a child make the death penalty an inappropriate order, according to NBC News.
“Although Lisa committed terrible crimes, her lifetime of extreme suffering and abuse weighs heavily in favor of clemency,” 41 U.S. attorneys, assistant attorneys, and other prosecutors wrote in a letter to President Trump. “You alone have the power to grant her mercy and spare her life, and we urge you to do so.”
