USA | Judge Delays Execution Of Only Woman On Federal Death Row

A federal judge has temporarily stayed the execution of Lisa M. Montgomery, the only woman on federal death row.

Montgomery was scheduled to be put to death on Dec. 8. Her lawyers asked the court for a delay after they contracted the coronavirus in the midst of preparing her clemency petition.

The order, issued by U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss in Washington, D.C., blocks the government from carrying out her execution before Dec. 31. The injunction was entered into a lawsuit filed on behalf of Montgomery by Cornell Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic.

Montgomery, 52, was a victim of extreme childhood abuse, including incest and sex trafficking, and suffers from serious mental illnesses, according to her lawyers and mental health professionals who have examined her. She was sentenced to death in 2007 for killing a pregnant woman and kidnapping the baby she was carrying, a crime her lawyers say occurred during a psychotic episode.

In October, Montgomery’s lawyers, Amy Harwell and Kelley Henry, learned their client was scheduled for execution by lethal injection at a prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, on Dec. 8. They immediately began traveling to visit her at a women’s medical prison in Fort Worth, Texas, to prepare her clemency application.

Both women contracted the coronavirus soon afterward and have been unable to work since. They are experiencing severe symptoms including issues with memory and concentration, according to a doctor who evaluated their illnesses.

“The district court’s ruling gives Lisa Montgomery a meaningful opportunity to prepare and present a clemency application after her attorneys recover from COVID,” said Sandra Babcock, clinical professor of law at Cornell Law School, who argued the case. “Mrs. Montgomery’s case presents compelling grounds for clemency, including her history as a victim of gang rape, incest, and child sex trafficking, as well as her severe mental illness. She will now have the opportunity to present this evidence to the President with a request that he commute her sentence to life imprisonment.”

Montgomery’s lawyers have also filed a petition with the Office of the Pardon Attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice asking President Donald Trump to delay their client’s execution until they are well enough to prepare her clemency application.

“We should not have to choose between our lives and our client’s life,” they wrote to Trump. “We did not ask to be put in this situation. We did our jobs and got sick.”

The Trump administration restarted federal executions this summer after an almost 20-year lapse. Three more executions, including Montgomery’s, are scheduled to take place before Trump leaves office.

President-elect Joe Biden, who is set to take office on Jan. 20, 2021, has said he will work to end the federal death penalty.

Source: Huffington Post, Staff, November 19, 2020

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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde

What Tennessee wants to do next to Christa Pike is beyond grim

Christa Pike, the woman who survived two execution attempts in Tennessee earlier this week, remains hospitalized in critical condition, where presumably medical staff is at work trying to keep her alive. If she wakes from the coma she had entered, Tennessee officials want to start anew to inject lethal drugs into her seemingly too-small veins to kill her and carry out the state death warrant. Pike also is being treated for “significant injuries to both arms” sustained when two lethal injections of pentobarbital failed to kill her. If she dies, there will be no need to try again. As we know by now, Tennessee tried to put Pike to death Wednesday night by lethal injection for a murder she committed when she was 18. She would have been the first woman executed in the state in 200 years.

Tennessee | Republicans legislature to investigate other execution methods after failed lethal injections

Republican leaders in Tennessee’s legislature say they will investigate the reliability of lethal injection as an execution method after the state failed to execute two death row inmates in the span of five months. Gov. Bill Lee stopped the May execution of Tony Carruthers after a physician unsuccessfully attempted to insert intravenous lines to begin the lethal injection process for over an hour. Death row inmate Christa Pike survived two failed rounds of Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol on Sept. 30 before the execution was halted. Pike, who was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer, is receiving medical care in a Nashville hospital.

Tennessee | Christa Pike’s lawyer says she has not regained consciousness since her failed execution

Christa Pike has remained unconscious and on a ventilator at a hospital in the four days since her failed execution in Tennessee, and her prognosis might not be known for days more, one of her lawyers said Sunday. Little has been released about Pike’s condition since Wednesday night’s execution attempt. She has since remained hospitalized under guard as doctors try to get the massive dose of the barbiturate pentobarbital out of her system. When asked whether she ever regained consciousness after the execution attempt, Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell, Pike’s lawyer, said on CNN’s “State of the Union”: “Not that I am aware of.”

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Opinion | I Know Christa Pike’s Medical History. What Tennessee Did Is Unforgivable.

Dr. Zivot is an anesthesiologist and intensive care physician. He consulted on Christa Pike’s case before her attempted execution. On Wednesday night, Christa Pike lay strapped to a gurney at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville while the State of Tennessee injected pentobarbital, a sedative that is lethal in high doses, into her veins. When the 1st dose did not kill her, the execution team gave her a 2nd. At one point, she told the room her arm felt as if it were about to burst. She was nearly correct. More than an hour after the procedure began, an ambulance was called. She was severely injured but still alive.

Christa Pike's Survival Wasn't a Miracle. That's What Should Scare Us.

What happened in Tennessee's execution chamber is one of the most common failures in medicine Christa Pike is awake. A week after Tennessee strapped her to a gurney and gave her two doses of pentobarbital , she is off the ventilator and speaking from a hospital bed, still shackled to it. Her lawyers call her recovery " medically unprecedented. " Legal scholars say she is the first person in American history to survive a lethal injection after the drug was actually given. I understand the impulse to make such claims. I consulted for Pike's legal team, but I have also spent three decades in operating rooms and intensive care units (ICUs), and I want to resist the word "unprecedented" and the word "miracle" that hovers just behind it.

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The public will be able to watch the execution of a former US Army major by firing squad, US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has said. A Defense Department official told the BBC the execution of Nidal Hasan, who shot dead 13 unarmed US soldiers at Fort Hood in 2009, would be livestreamed. It is believed it would be the first public execution in the US in almost a century. The decision to livestream it is "unprecedented in the modern era" and "on uncertain legal terrain", said John Mills, a lawyer who works with inmates sentenced to death.

I’ve Covered Death Row Cases for Nearly a Decade. What Happened to Christa Pike Wasn’t an Anomaly.

Over the course of two hours, witnesses watched and listened as Christa Pike cried, whimpered and snored through Tennessee’s attempt to execute her. By the end of it, executioners had given her two doses of the state’s lethal injection drugs. Her arms were swollen and blistered, and one had turned purple, her attorneys said. And she was still alive, marking what legal experts say is the first time a prisoner in the U.S. has survived one dose—let alone two—of lethal injection drugs.

Singapore | Ministry of Home Affairs refutes claims that death penalty was discussed during visit by Israel's security ministry

The Ministry of Home Affairs says discussions with the Israeli government involved the sharing of best practices in emergency response, crime prevention, and forensics. Issues relating to the death penalty “were never part of the meeting and were not discussed." SINGAPORE: The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on Friday (Sep 11) refuted claims by an Israeli media outlet that the death penalty was discussed during a visit by an Israeli delegation in May. The Haaretz newspaper reported on Sep 7 that a delegation comprising representatives from the Israel Prison Service and National Security Ministry made a “secret visit” to Singapore that month.

Christa Pike: 4 Major Questions As She Returns to Death Row

As Christa Pike returns to death row after surviving Tennessee’s attempt to execute her, several questions remain about her case and what comes next. Pike, 50, was discharged from hospital and moved back to the Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center, the women’s prison where she was housed for 30 years, her attorneys said on Saturday. She was hospitalized after surviving 2 doses of the lethal drug pentobarbital as Tennessee attempted to execute her on September 30. Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, her classmate at a Job Corps training program in Knoxville, Tennessee. Pike was 18 at the time.

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