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Lisa Montgomery's new execution date for her conviction in a Missouri womb-raiding case that horrified investigators and the small town where it happened has been put off until next month.
The U.S. government says it will now execute the first woman in almost six decades on Jan. 12, which is just days ahead of the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden, who opposes the death penalty.
Montgomery had been scheduled to die by lethal injection Tuesday evening at the U.S. Penitentiary Terre Haute, Ind.
The federal execution of Lisa Montgomery has been temporarily halted after two of her lawyers contract the coronavirus. (Getty Images)
It was postponed after the coronavirus sickened her lawyers, Tennessee federal public defenders Kelley Henry and Amy Harwell, last month.
The delay gives them time to prepare a clemency application, USA Today has reported.
The postponement also comes with many legal experts, social workers, justice groups and others urging President Trump to call off the execution.
It was in December 2004 in the tiny northwest Missouri town of Skidmore that authorities said Montgomery burst into the home of 23-year-old Bobbie Jo Stinnett who was 8 months pregnant at the time and carried out the crime.
According to police, Montgomery used a rope to strangle Stinnett and then cut the baby girl from the womb with a paring knife before fleeing.
Lisa Montgomery and the house where the crime occured
LISA MONTGOMERY'S LAWYERS SEEK TO DELAY EXECUTION AFTER CONTRACTING CORONAVIRUS
Nodaway County Sheriff Randy Strong was one of the first investigators on the scene.
“The report was that a mother had found her daughter who was pregnant on the floor and it looked like her abdomen had exploded," he says in a documentary, "A Mother's Justice: The Trials of Lisa Montgomery" that aired Monday on WTIU, an Indiana public television station.
“Probably one of the worst things I’d seen done to a human,” he adds.
Strong also says forensic evidence led him and the other investigators to Montgomery who had exchanged emails with Stinnett about buying dogs using the name Darlene Fisher and what he said was “the rather ominous” email address Fisher4kids@hotmail.com
The sheriff says that when they went to Montgomery’s house, they found her on the couch with a baby.
He says during questioning Montgomery eventually opened up and told them what she had done.
DOJ SCHEDULES FIRST EXECUTION OF FEMALE FEDERAL INMATE IN 6 DECADES
Montgomery quoted her as saying, “I took the baby out and I cut the cord, I cleaned it with my fingers and I stuck in my coat.”
To him and other investigators it was clear that Montgomery had planned the crime.
The trial took place in 2007 in Kansas City and according to reports at the time included the testimony of Montgomery's husband.
Kevin Montgomery told the jury that his wife had faked pregnancies in the past and that it wasn’t strange when she called to say she had given birth and asked him to pick her and the baby up in Topeka, Kan.
"I knew she didn't like hospitals and doctors," he testified. He said he met his wife and the newborn in the parking lot of a Long John Silver's restaurant.
Montgomery's trial lawyer put on an insanity defense that Henry says in the documentary, was “bungled."
Henry and Harwell, argue that Montgomery suffers from serious mental illness due to abuse she suffered physically and sexually at the hands of her parents and a step-father.
“Lisa is one of the most mentally ill, traumatized clients I’ve ever dealt with,” Henry tells WTIU.
But the government prosecutor at the trial, Roseann Kechmark, who is now a federal judge, defends the prosecution.
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“Just because someone is wicked or depraved that doesn’t equate to insanity, legal insanity,” she says.
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