Lisa Montgomery, scheduled execution on January 12, 2021

Sentenced to death: Lisa Montgomery, scheduled execution on December 8, 2020

Execution date: 13 January 2021

Place of execution: Terre Haute, IN (Federal Penitentiary) - United States

Lisa Montgomery, 53 years old. Her execution was rescheduled for January 12, 2021

At present Lisa is in a detention health center in Forth Worth, Texas.
Today, federal authorities reject any evidence and appeal in defense of Lisa.

While being close to those who continue to suffer because of an unjust and hateful crime, we are very much aware that there will be no healing by killing another human being, an extremely fragile woman. There is no justice without life. Facing the greatest evil there is no justice without taking the reasons of mercy into account.

We ask those who can decide on life or death to stop and consider, as is increasingly happening in the world, every available alternative measure of justice and clemency.

Lisa Montgomery is now 53 years old. She was sentenced to death for the ferocious murder of an eight month pregnant woman, and kidnapping her unborn baby. The little girl survived and is now 16 years old.

Lisa has always suffered from unresolved mental disorders and repeated sexual abuse in her family since childhood. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, the last woman to be executed by the federal government was Bonnie Heady, killed in the gas chamber in 1953.

More than 1,000 lawyers have signed letters urging Donald Trump to commute Lisa’s death sentence to life imprisonment, referring to her diagnosis of serious mental illness.

“Readers often confuse clemency with pardon in death penalty cases,” says Sandra Babcock, a clinical professor of law at Cornell Law School and faculty director of the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide, who is working to delay Montgomery’s execution so her lawyers can present a clemency petition. “We are not asking that she be absolved of guilt. What we’re asking is that she be extended mercy,” she added. Lisa’s execution is presently rescheduled for January 12, 2021 because her lawyers contracted Covid-19. They hope to present the elements for evidence and grounds for appeal in Lisa’s defense. Lisa would be the first woman in 67 years to be executed by the federal government.

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Object

Email text

I am writing to you respectfully, with the hope that clemency and mercy shall be used, in order to save the life of Ms. Lisa Mongomery (Federal Bureau of Prisons 11072-031), whose execution is scheduled on January 12, 2021.
I am convinced that respect for life is upheld for all and is never lost from one’s actions: no one has the power to create or destroy the gift of life. I affirm, in the light of the Gospel together with Pope Francis: "...the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person".
In closeness to those who cannot cease from suffering after a heinous and unjust crime, I am firmly conscious that no healing could come by putting to death another human being.
In the United States, women have not been put to death since 1953, acknowledging in every case their condition of greater fragility.
In Ms Montgomery's case, never solved serious mental illness have always been adding to perpetuated family abuse suffering, since her juvenile years, assumingly so to get to an early most severe mental disability: this should be acknowledged as impediment to executing a death sentence, according to many US Supreme Court rulings, concord statements by eminent medical associations and much part of public opinion.
Ms Montgomery's case has the likelihood of the most severe grade of insanity and early mental disability. Many could doubt about the actual opportunity to carry on such a divisive execution in crucial months for the Union future.
There is no justice without considering, in the face of the greatest evil, the reasons of mercy.
We ask those who can decide for Ms. Montgomery's life to stop and consider, as increasingly achieved worldwide, any viable alternative measure of justice and clemency.
Yours faithfully,

Sentence executed

Lisa Montgomery, scheduled execution on January 12, 2021

Community of Sant'Egidio