In the United States, for the first time in nearly 70 years, a woman who was sentenced to death at the federal level was executed. This was reported on October 16 by the Associated Press with reference to the country’s Ministry of Justice.
The verdict will be carried out on December 8 in Indiana by lethal injection.
A woman named Lisa Montgomery was convicted of the murder of 23-year-old Bobby Joe Stinnett in December 2004. It is noted that Montgomery strangled Stinnett, who was eight months old, and then abducted her child, trying to pass off her own.
The lawyers tried to prove to the court that the defendant suffered from hallucinations and pseudociesis – a condition when a woman falsely finds signs of pregnancy in her. Despite this, the jury sentenced her to death.
The Justice Department also ordered the execution of 40-year-old Brandon Bernard, who was involved in the murder of two young politicians in 1999, for December 10.
In July, the US authorities resumed executions at the federal level 17 years later. Since 2003, an unofficial moratorium has been in effect – capital punishment was applied only at the state level.
The first to be executed was Daniel Lewis Lee, who was serving a sentence in the Terre Haute prison in Indiana for the murder of three people.