UPDATE: US carries out its 1st execution of female inmate since 1953

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (AP) – The U.S. government has carried out its first execution of a female inmate in nearly seven decades. Authorities executed a Kansas woman who strangled an expectant mother in Missouri and cut the baby from her womb.

Lisa Montgomery was pronounced dead at 1:31 a.m. Wednesday after receiving a lethal injection at the federal prison complex in Terre Haute, Indiana. Montgomery killed 23-year-old Bobbie Jo Stinnett in Skidmore, Missouri.

She was the 11th prisoner executed since July, when President Donald Trump resumed federal executions following 17 years without one. President-elect Joe Biden, a death penalty opponent, will be sworn-in next week.

A federal judge on Tuesday halted two other executions scheduled for this week after the inmates tested positive for COVID-19.

MISSION, Kan. (AP) – A judge has halted the U.S. government’s first execution of a female inmate in nearly seven decades.

The order was handed down less than 24 hours before Lisa Montgomery was set to be executed Tuesday at the federal prison complex in Terre Haute, Indiana. It temporarily blocks the federal Bureau of Prisons from moving forward with her execution.

U.S. District Judge James Patrick Hanlon says a court must first determine whether the Kansas woman who killed an expectant mother, cut the baby from her womb in 2004 and then tried to pass off the newborn as her own is mentally competent.