Vatican City, Jan 8, 2021 / 05:22 am
A woman convicted of murdering a woman and stealing her unborn child should be granted clemency ahead of her scheduled execution on Jan. 12, her lawyer told CNA.
Lisa Montgomery was sentenced to death in 2007 for the Dec. 16, 2004 murder of Bobbie Jo Stinnett, a 23-year-old woman who was eight months pregnant. Montgomery, who told Stinnett her name was "Darlene Fischer," claimed to be pregnant as well, and the two communicated online prior to meeting at Stinnett's home in Skidmore, Missouri.
Montgomery strangled Stinnett, and then cut her stomach to deliver the child, a girl, via a rudimentary cesarean section. The newborn baby girl was discovered, alive, one day later when Montgomery was arrested in Kansas. Montgomery reportedly told her husband that the baby was hers.
The federal government tried the case in part as it involved a kidnapping over state lines.