By Janet Post January 25, 2021
Reuters/Bryan WoolstonJan. 12 protest at Terre Haute, Indiana, federal prison against execution of Lisa Montgomery. Opponents of death penalty are fighting to prevent two more scheduled executions.
Lisa Montgomery, the only woman on federal death row in the U.S., was executed by lethal injection at 1:31 a.m. on Jan. 13. The Supreme Court vacated three different stays by appeals courts, including an order for a competency hearing to determine whether she was mentally fit to be executed.
Only five women had ever been executed by the federal government before Montgomery, including Ethel Rosenberg, framed up during the anti-communist witch hunt and executed in 1953 on charges of conspiring to commit espionage.
Valid arguments exist for and against the use of the federal death penalty. It remains legal under U.S. law.
The inmates facing that sentence by lethal injection inside the Terre Haute Federal Correctional Complex’s execution chamber have been convicted of committing horrendous crimes. The guilty deserve punishment. The victims’ families deserve justice.
Those realities do not legitimize the U.S. Department of Justice’s rush to execute as many death-row inmates as possible in the last months of Donald Trump’s presidency. By his final day in office on Jan. 20, a total of 13 executions will have been carried out in six months, more than any since Grover Cleveland’s presidency in the late 19th century.
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