Federal government to execute first woman in over 60 years

The federal government is scheduled to execute a woman for the first time in more than 60 years.

Lisa Montgomery was convicted in 2007 of fatally strangling a pregnant woman, cutting open her body and kidnapping her baby.

She will be executed by lethal injection on Dec. 8 in Indiana, according to the Justice Department. 

In December 2004, Montgomery drove from her home in Kansas to the Missouri home of Bobbie Jo Stinnett, who was eight months pregnant at the time. Once she was inside the home, Montgomery strangled Stinnett to death, cut open her body and kidnapped her baby. She subsequently confessed to the killing. 

A federal jury in Missouri found her guilty of federal kidnapping resulting in death in October 2007, and the court imposed the death penalty. Her conviction and sentence were affirmed on appeal, and her request for collateral relief was repeatedly denied. 

Montgomery will be the first woman the federal government has executed since December 1953, when Bonnie Brown Heady was sentenced to death with Carl Austin Hall for kidnapping and murder, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons. In June 1953, Ethel Rosenberg and her husband, Julius Rosenberg, were executed by electrocution for espionage.  

The Justice Department also scheduled the execution of Brandon Bernard, who was convicted of killing two youth ministers on a military reserve in Texas in 1999. His execution is set for Dec. 10, and he will also be executed by lethal injection.  

One of his accomplices, Christopher Vialva, was executed by lethal injection for his role in one of the murders on Sept. 22. He was the first Black man to be executed since the death penalty resumed. 

Both will be executed in the U.S. Penitentiary Terre Haute, Indiana. 

The federal government has executed seven people so far this year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.

The Supreme Court cleared the way for executions in July after a 17-year break from the practice.