Justice Department schedules executions for three more inmates before Biden takes office
By Paul Best
Fox News
November 20, 2020
Attorney General William Barr directed the Federal Bureau of Prisons Friday to set execution dates for three more death row inmates before President-elect Joe Biden takes office Jan. 20.
Eight federal inmates have been executed in 2020 and two others were already scheduled to be put to death before President Trump leaves office.
When Barr announced the resumption of the death penalty last summer, Biden responded by saying it is time to get rid of capital punishment.
"Since 1973, over 160 individuals in this country have been sentenced to death and were later exonerated," Biden tweeted in response to Barr greenlighting executions. "Because we can’t ensure that we get these cases right every time, we must eliminate the death penalty."
He also said he would "work to pass legislation to eliminate the death penalty at the federal level, and incentivize states to follow the federal government’s example."
Multiple Democratic lawmakers sent a letter to Barr earlier this week, urging him to halt any more executions before President Trump leaves office.
“President-Elect Biden’s plan for strengthening America’s commitment to justice includes the elimination of the federal death penalty and Vice-President-Elect Harris is an original cosponsor of legislation we have introduced to eliminate the federal death penalty,” the lawmakers wrote in the letter.
“While you will remain in office for a few more weeks, going forward with executions in the weeks before the new administration takes office would be a grave injustice.”
The three death row inmates scheduled Friday for execution were convicted of murder.
Alfred Bourgeois is set to be executed Dec. 11 for abusing, beating and torturing his 2-year-old daughter to death in 2002.
Cory Johnson murdered seven people who were caught up in his drug-trafficking activities in 1992 and is set to be executed on Jan. 14.
Dustin John Higgs is set to be executed Jan. 15 for kidnapping and murdering three women in the 1990s.
The most recent inmate to be executed was Orlando Cordia Hall, who was put to death Thursday just before midnight for raping and murdering a 16-year-old girl in 1994.
At least one other person, Brandon Bernard, already was scheduled to be executed before the end of 2020. He was convicted of murdering married youth ministers Todd and Stacie Bagley, in 1999. Bernard's execution is scheduled for Dec. 10.
Lisa Montgomery was scheduled to be put to death Dec. 8 for strangling a pregnant woman then cutting her open and kidnapping her baby, but a judge ruled Thursday that her execution must be delayed until next year because her attorneys contracted coronavirus. She would be the first female federal inmate executed in nearly 60 years.
It is unclear when exactly Montgomery's new execution date will be, but the chances of it happening likely will hinge on whether Biden has been inaugurated yet.
Last year, a Gallup poll found 60% of Americans think life in prison is the appropriate punishment for murder, and 36% said the death penalty is the appropriate punishment. That's a shift from previous decades.
In the 1980s and 1990s, a large majority of Americans thought the death penalty was justified, and the country was split roughly 50-50 on the issue through most of the 2000s.
According to the Pew Research Center, "public support for the death penalty has tracked rates of violent crime," meaning that as violent crime rates drop, support for the death penalty drops.
If that trend continues, then support for the death penalty may increase soon, as certain types of crime have soared in 2020 amid social upheaval and the coronavirus pandemic.
According to a September report by the National Commission on COVID-19 and Criminal Justice, Homicide rates in 27 U.S. cities increased by 53% between June and August of 2020 over the same period last year. Aggravated assaults went up 14%, while burglaries fell.
__________
THIS POOR MURDERER WAS HORRIBLY ABUSED AS A CHILD ..... SO WHAT!
Trump urged by over 1,000 advocates to stop death sentence for inmate who cut baby out of pregnant woman
Fox News
November 12, 2020
More than 1,000 advocates, including current and former prosecutors organized through Cornell Law School, are asking President Trump to spare the life of the only woman currently on death row in the U.S. who was convicted of strangling a pregnant woman and cutting out the baby to raise as her own.
U.S. Attorney General William Barr directed the Federal Bureau of Prisons on Oct. 16 to schedule the execution of 52-year-old Lisa Montgomery, who has been on death row since her conviction 13 years ago. She is to be executed by lethal injection on Dec. 8 at the U.S. Penitentiary Terre Haute, Indiana.
In a premeditated murder-kidnap scheme in 2004, Montgomery drove from her home in Kansas to meet 23-year-old Bobbie Jo Stinnett, who was eight months pregnant, at her home in Missouri under the guise she was coming to purchase a puppy, the Justice Department said in a press release.
Once inside the residence, Montgomery attacked and strangled Stinnett until the victim lost consciousness. Using a kitchen knife, Montgomery then cut into Stinnett’s abdomen, causing her to regain consciousness. A struggle ensued, and Montgomery strangled Stinnett to death.
Montgomery removed the baby from Stinnett’s body, took the baby with her, and attempted to pass it off as her own, according to the Justice Department. She later confessed to the murder and abduction.
In October 2007, a jury in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri found Montgomery guilty of federal kidnapping resulting in death, and unanimously recommended a death sentence, which the court imposed. The Justice Department said her conviction and sentence were affirmed on appeal, and her request for collateral relief was rejected by every court that considered it.
Despite this, a broad coalition of current and former prosecutors, anti-sex trafficking and anti-domestic violence groups, child advocates and mental health groups is calling on Trump to stop Montgomery’s execution and commit her sentence to life without parole.
In a series of letters delivered Wednesday, the groups argued Montgomery’s execution would be unconscionable, given she suffers from extreme mental illness and endured relentless physical, emotional, and sexual abuse including being raped by a stepfather and gang-raped by his friends as a child and being trafficked by her own mother as a teen to men for money.
Organizing through Cornell Law School's Center on Death Penalty Worldwide, 41 current and former prosecutors argued “Lisa’s experiences as a victim of horrific sexual violence, physical abuse, and being trafficked as a child do not excuse her crime. But her history provides us with an important explanation that would influence any sentencing recommendation we made as prosecutors.”
In a separate letter, two former prosecutors who have experience litigating similar cases involving attacks on pregnant women argued, “These crimes are inevitably the product of serious mental illness. Women who commit such crimes also are likely to have been victimized themselves. These are important factors that make death sentences inappropriate.”
That letter by Stanley Garnett, former District Attorney for Colorado’s 20th Judicial District, and Harry Zimmerman, former deputy district attorney for Bernalillo County, New Mexico, also pointed out that many experts have stated Montgomery was experiencing a psychotic episode when the crime occurred.
Another letter from 800 organizations, scholars, individuals, law clinics, and survivors dedicated to ending violence against women said her sentence deserved to be commuted because she was “consistently failed by people and systems that should have helped her.”
“Lisa told people about her abuse, but no one intervened,” the letter said. “School administrators knew that Lisa came to school dirty, in tattered clothes, but failed to investigate or report.”
A group of 40 advocates working to support children who have been exploited and victimized by neglect, violence, and sexual abuse also made the case that “there were many missed opportunities to intervene and stop Lisa’s suffering,” and social services, a judge and a police officer who was also her cousin all failed to intervene.
The National Alliance on Mental Illness, Treatment Advocacy Center, and Mental Health America detailed how Montgomery sustained organic brain damage before she was born due to her mother’s alcohol abuse during pregnancy, and, because she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder with psychosis, “may experience hallucinations, delusions, disordered thinking, and a loss of contact with reality.”
A group of 100 organizations dedicated to combatting human trafficking urged Trump to consider how the abuse affected Montgomery's mental health as the “critical context that explains why she committed these acts, which might otherwise seem incomprehensible.”
EDITOR'S NOTE: By their reasoning, this abused murderer should never have been imprisoned at all.
1 comment:
The United States Constitution and maybe state constitutions specifically PERMIT the death penalty. That doesn't mean it has to be used or will be used. Joe The Harisniffer has no ability to "outlaw" the death penalty via executive action.
Post a Comment