Entries tagged with “Lisa Montgomery”
Nov 08, 2024
The Role of Trauma and Mitigation in Capital Punishment
In the early 1990s, the case of Erik and Lyle Menendez captivated the American public, not only because of the brutality of their crime but also because of the defense they presented. The brothers, age 18 and 21 at the time of the crime, were charged with first-degree murder with special circumstances for killing their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez. These special circumstances made the crime a death-eligible offense. Prosecutors alleged they were privileged young men acting out of greed, but…
Research
Federal Death Penalty
,Oct 03, 2023
Analysis Shows Supreme Court’s Changing View of Death Penalty Cases
A recent analysis by Bloomberg Law concluded that death-sentenced prisoners have fewer avenues to relief at the Supreme Court than ever before. Bloomberg identified 270 emergency requests to stay executions since 2013 and found that the Court agreed to block an execution just 11 times. Since 2020, when the Court shifted to a 6 – 3 conservative majority following the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the appointment of Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the Court has granted just two stays of…
Research
Federal Death Penalty
,Jan 29, 2021
Legitimacy and the Rule of Law: Supreme Court’s Institutional Standing Damaged by Rulings During Federal Execution Spree
From July 14, 2020 through January 16, 2021, the federal government executed thirteen prisoners. It was the most consecutive executions by a single jurisdiction since the U.S. death penalty resumed in the 1970s and the longest period of time in which an execution spree by any government went unabated while no other jurisdiction executed anyone. During that time, the U.S. Supreme Court repeatedly intervened to facilitate executions, despite numerous disputed issues of material fact and…
Issues
Native Americans
,Women
,Federal Death Penalty
,Jan 18, 2021
‘This is Not Justice’ — Federal Execution Spree Ends with Planned Execution of African-American on Martin Luther King Jr’s Birthday
An historically aberrant six-month federal execution spree came to a close after midnight on January 16, 2021 when an African-American man who was scheduled to die on the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday was put to death by private executioners hired in a secret no-bid contract. Dustin John Higgs (pictured), who did not kill anyone and professed his innocence prior to his execution, was pronounced dead at 1:23 a.m. The execution moved forward after six justices of the U.S. Supreme…
Issues
Women
,Federal Death Penalty
,Jan 13, 2021
Supreme Court Vacates Stays of Execution, Paves Way for Late-Night Execution of Lisa Montgomery
After a series of rulings by the United States Supreme Court summarily vacated two stays of execution and denied attempts to reinstate two others, the federal government executed death row prisoner Lisa Montgomery (pictured) on January 13, 2021. Montgomery, the only woman on federal death row, was the first woman executed by the federal government in more than 67 years, the first person executed in the U.S. in 2021, and the 11th prisoner put to death in a six-month federal execution spree…
Executions
Upcoming Executions
,Women
,Federal Death Penalty
,Jan 04, 2021
Federal Appeals Court Reverses Block on Lisa Montgomery Execution, Dustin Higgs Execution Hits Snag
One week before the federal government intends to put three prisoners to death, two of the scheduled executions remain in doubt after rulings by federal courts in Washington, D.C. and Baltimore. The scheduled January 12, 2021 execution of Lisa Montgomery (pictured, left) appeared to be back on after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed a district court ruling that had vacated her execution date. At the same time, the scheduled January 15, 2021 execution of…
Executions
Upcoming Executions
,Federal Death Penalty
,Dec 28, 2020
District Court Voids Lisa Montgomery Execution Date; Federal Prosecutors Appeal
Saying the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) acted unlawfully in resetting Lisa Montgomery’s execution for January 12, 2021, a federal judge in Washington has for a second time blocked efforts by the U.S. Department of Justice to put to death the only woman on federal death row. In an order issued late in the day on December 24, 2020, U.S. District Court Judge Randolph D. Moss agreed with Montgomery’s lawyers that the BOP lacked legal authority to reschedule Montgomery’s execution while a…
Research
Upcoming Executions
,Federal Death Penalty
,Dec 21, 2020
Federal Prisoners Facing Execution Contract COVID-19 in Outbreak Spread by Prior Executions
Two men scheduled for execution by the federal government in January 2021 are among the federal death-row prisoners who have tested positive for COVID-19 at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana. Lawyers for Corey Johnson (pictured, left) and Dustin Higgs (pictured, below), announced that they had been notified by the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) that their clients had contracted the coronavirus, amidst an outbreak of the disease at the prison in the wake of the federal…
Issues
Upcoming Executions
,Conditions on Death Row
,Women
,Federal Death Penalty
,Dec 18, 2020
Human Rights Tribunal Calls for Stay of Execution for Lisa Montgomery
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), the human rights body charged with overseeing Western Hemisphere nations’ compliance with human rights obligations, has called on the United States to halt the scheduled January 12, 2021 execution of Lisa Montgomery. Citing Montgomery’s history of extreme trauma and mental illness and the irreversibility of execution, the IACHR ruled on December 1, 2020, that Montgomery had presented serious claims that her execution and her current…
Research
Upcoming Executions
,Federal Death Penalty
,Dec 07, 2020
Prosecutors Call for Ending Federal Executions
Saying “our nation’s long experiment with the death penalty has failed,” a coalition of nearly 100 criminal justice officials is calling on the federal government to halt the five executions currently scheduled for December 2020 and January 2021 and to end its use of the death penalty. In a joint statement released on December 3, 2020, 95 current and former prosecutors, U.S. Attorneys, police chiefs, and sheriffs wrote that the U.S. death penalty process “is broken, implicates systemic racism…
Executions
Upcoming Executions
,Conditions on Death Row
,Federal Death Penalty
,Dec 03, 2020
COVID-19 Prison Outbreaks Kill Death-Row Prisoners in Ohio and Missouri and Infect At Least 11 on Tennessee’s Death Row
New COVID-19 outbreaks on the nation’s death rows have killed prisoners in Ohio and Missouri and sickened at least 11 men on Tennessee’s death row. James Frazier (pictured, left), 79, Ohio’s oldest death-row prisoner, died of the virus on November 19, 2020 after 15 years on death row. He suffered from dementia following a series of strokes, and his lawyers had recently filed a petition to bar his execution on grounds of mental incompetency. Richard “Ricky” Davis (pictured, right), 56, who…
Issues
Upcoming Executions
,Federal Death Penalty
,Nov 23, 2020
Trump Administration Presses Forward with Death Penalty Despite Election Defeat, Announcing 3 More Death Warrants and More Capital Prosecutions
Despite its defeat at the polls on November 3, the Trump administration is pressing forward with efforts to conduct an historically unprecedented number of lame duck executions and in announcing new federal capital prosecutions that it will not be in position to carry out. After the close of business on Friday, November 20, 2020, one day after carrying out the first execution during a presidential transition period in more than a century, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced its intention…
Issues
Upcoming Executions
,Women
,Federal Death Penalty
,Nov 13, 2020
Lawyers for Lisa Montgomery Contract COVID-19 During Prison Visits, Seek Stay of Execution
Lawyers for federal death-row prisoner Lisa Montgomery filed suit in federal district court in Washington, D.C. on November 12, seeking to stay her December 8 execution because the lead counsel in her case have contracted the coronavirus. A stay is necessary, the complaint alleges, because Montgomery’s lawyers “cannot represent her because they are seriously ill, through no fault of their own. On the contrary, they are sick because [Attorney General William] Barr recklessly scheduled Mrs.
Issues
Women
,Federal Death Penalty
,Nov 12, 2020
Coalition of More Than 1,000 Advocates Urge Federal Government to Halt December 8 Execution of Lisa Montgomery
A diverse coalition of more than 1,000 advocates, including current and former prosecutors, activists fighting sex trafficking and domestic violence, and mental health organizations, have joined forces to ask President Donald Trump to halt the upcoming execution of the only woman on federal death row, Lisa Montgomery (pictured). In a series of letters delivered to administration officials and released to the public by Montgomery’s lawyers on November 11, 2020, the advocates argue that…
Issues
Upcoming Executions
,Women
,Federal Death Penalty
,Oct 19, 2020
U.S. Government Sets Two More Execution Dates, Seeking to Put to Death the First Woman and the Youngest Offender in More Than Six Decades
The federal government intends to continue its unprecedented execution spree into December, scheduling the executions of the first woman and the youngest offender put to death by federal authorities in nearly seven decades. In a Friday evening announcement, the U.S. Department of Justice announced on October 16, 2020 that it had set the execution of Lisa Montgomery (pictured) for December 8 and Brandon Bernard for December 10. Montgomery, a victim of sex trafficking who suffers from psychosis…