EU denounces US execution of mentally-ill female convict
The European Union (EU) has lashed out at the United States for the execution of a mentally-ill convicted murderer and the only woman on federal death row, Lisa Montgomery, expressing deep regrets over the event.
In October 2007, a federal jury in Missouri found Montgomery guilty of one count of abduction resulting in death. According to federal prosecutors, she allegedly murdered Bobbie Jo Stinnett by strangulation and kidnapped her unborn baby in 2004. She was accused of cutting Stinnett’s fetus out of the womb and trying to pass off the child as her own.
Montgomery was finally executed by lethal injection at a prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, on Wednesday, despite the fact that medical and mental state examinations had revealed that her brain was structurally damaged and that she suffered from psychosis, auditory hallucinations, and other mental illnesses.
Later in the day, the European Commission in a statement slammed the execution of the 52-year-old woman, saying it “deeply regrets” the move, which was the first execution of a female inmate by the US government in almost 70 years.
The European body had earlier demanded clemency for Montgomery, noting that minimum standards had to be respected for those with mental disorders.
Her death marked a flurry of executions in the final weeks and days of outgoing US President Donald Trump, who has been impeached at the US House of Representatives a historic second time for inciting violence.
The EU is now demanding that the White House reverse all pending federal-level executions during the final days of the embattled Trump.
“Since the resumption of the federal death penalty in July 2020, after a 17-year hiatus, we have witnessed a high number of executions,” said Peter Stano, a European Commission spokesperson.
Separately, Montgomery’s lawyer, Kelly Henry, tweeted early on Wednesday and shortly after the execution of her client that, “The craven bloodlust of a failed administration was on full display tonight.”
She also called the execution “vicious, unlawful, and unnecessary exercise of authoritarian power.”
According to a new statement by the Death Penalty Information Center, a non-profit organization based in Washington DC, the sheer number of executions has set the Trump administration apart as “an outlier” in the use of capital punishment.
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