Lisa Montgomery Executed: Trump administration executes first woman in 67 years

The Trump administration has executed convicted murderer Lisa Montgomery, after the Supreme Court cleared the last hurdle for her execution by overturning a stay.

She was the only woman on federal death row, and the first to be executed by federal authorities in 67 years. Her execution has been criticised by many activists on social media.

52-year-old Lisa Montgomery, was pronounced dead at 1:31 a.m (American time). after receiving a lethal injection at the federal prison complex in Terre Haute, Indiana.

She was the 11th prisoner to receive a lethal injection there since July when President Donald Trump, an ardent supporter of capital punishment, resumed federal executions following 17 years without one.

The last woman executed by the federal government was Bonnie Brown Heady on Dec. 18, 1953, for the kidnapping and murder of a 6-year-old boy in Missouri.

The last woman executed by a state was Kelly Gissendaner, 47, on Sept. 30, 2015, in Georgia. She was convicted of murder in the 1997 slaying of her husband after she conspired with her lover, who stabbed Douglas Gissendaner to death.

Kelley Henry, Montgomery’s lawyer, in scathing remarks, called the pending execution, “vicious, unlawful, and unnecessary exercise of authoritarian power.”

“No one can credibly dispute Mrs. Montgomery’s longstanding debilitating mental disease – diagnosed and treated for the first time by the Bureau of Prisons’ own doctors,” Henry said in a statement.

Montgomery was convicted in 2007 in Missouri for kidnapping and strangling Bobbie Jo Stinnett, then eight months pregnant.

Montgomery cut Stinnett’s fetus from the womb. The child survived.

Some of Stinnett’s relatives have traveled to witness Montgomery’s execution, the Justice Department said.