A federal appeals court on Friday paved the way for the execution of the only woman on federal death penalty later this month.
According to The Associated Press, the three-judge panel at the U.S. District Court of Appeals for Columbia District ruled that a lower court judge had improperly vacated Lisa Montgomery’s execution date last week.
U.S. Judge Randolph Moss in U.S. District Court delayed execution originally planned for December at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Ind., after Montgomery’s attorneys contracted COVID-19 while visiting their client.
Moss banned the Bureau of Prisons from carrying out the execution before the end of the year, and officials rescheduled it for Jan. 12. But Moss ruled that the agency was banned from rescheduling the date while a stay was in place, the AP reported. at that point.
However, the appeals panel did not agree with this decision on Friday, choosing the path to Montgomery’s execution just days before the president-elect. Joe Biden
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The Trump administration is resuming federal executions this year after a 17-year hiatus over the practice, execution of more prisoners in 2020 as all the states still carrying out the death penalty together, according to a recent report from the Information Center for the Death Penalty.
Montgomery lawyers tried to prevent her execution, citing serious mental illness, and Biden repeatedly expressed his opposition to the death penalty.
While Biden did not indicate whether he would stop federal executions upon taking office, a spokesman, TJ Ducklo, said the former vice president would end the practice, the AP reported.
Montgomery was convicted in 2007 of strangling in 2004 a woman who was eight months pregnant at the time. Montgomery removed the unborn child, who survived, from Bobbie Jo Stinnet’s womb after the murder.
Prosecutors say Montgomery then took the girl along and tried to surrender her as her own.