US to Execute Woman for First Time Since 1953

13 years ago she was convicted of murdering a pregnant woman and stealing her child.

The US Justice Department said that for the first time in nearly 70 years, a female federal inmate will be executed in the country. It will be the first such execution since 1953, BBC reports.

The last woman executed by the US government was Bonnie Heady, who died in a gas chamber in Missouri in 1953, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Two executions are scheduled for December this year: Lisa Montgomery and Brandon Bernard, whose crimes, in the words of US Attorney General William Barr, "were particularly heinous".

In 2004, Lisa Montgomery attacked Bobby Jo Stinnett, who was pregnant, after visiting her supposedly to buy a puppy. Once inside her home, Montgomery began strangling Stinnett until she lost consciousness. She then cut open her belly; the victim regained consciousness and a fight broke out. During the struggle, Montgomery took Stinnett's baby and tried to pass it off as her own. The mutilated mother died.

In 2007, a jury found Lisa Montgomery guilty and recommended execution by lethal injection. Lawyers are confident that execution will not threaten her because she was not mentally healthy at the time of the crime.

Since 1972, a Supreme Court ruling has declared the death penalty illegal at both the federal and state levels in the US. Four years later, it was allowed at the state level, and in 1988 the US government legalised it at the federal level.

According to data compiled by the Death Penalty Information Center, 78 people were sentenced to death in federal cases between 1988 and 2018, but only three were executed. The Trump administration said last year that it would resume federal executions after a long pause.