Lawyers file petition for condemned woman saying execution would violate 8th Amendment

Lawyers for death row inmate Lisa Montgomery, scheduled next week to become the first woman executed by the federal government in over 70 years, argue in a new filing her execution would violate the Eighth Amendment because her severe mental illness makes her “incompetent to be executed.”

Montgomery is facing the death penalty for a 2004 crime in which she strangled a pregnant Missouri woman to death, performed a Caesarean section on her and kidnapped her infant. Her lawyers are asking President Trump to commute her sentence to life in prison. 

Montgomery’s attorneys have argued that a lifetime of brutal trauma and torture, including allegedly being raped by her stepfather and a series of grown men when she was a young teenager, has rendered her crippled by debilitating mental illness and thus not liable for capital punishment under U.S. law.

In their latest filing, her attorneys argue that Montgomery “continues to be psychotic as a result of co-morbid conditions of serious mental illness, neurological impairment, and complex trauma. These conditions make her incompetent to be executed.”

“Executing a person who is not competent … violates the Fifth and Eighth Amendments,” the attorneys argue. The Fifth Amendment in part mandates due process for criminal punishments, while the Eighth Amendment outlaws cruel and unusual punishment for crimes.