Her defense team - Frederick Duchardt, John O’Connor, and David Owen - did not present this in mitigation. A variety of MRIs and PET scans revealed a physical picture consistent with these diagnoses and also showed clear evidence of serious brain damage, with some of which she was probably born due to her mother’s alcoholism, but much of which was most likely due to the violence of the abuse she suffered. Psychiatric and other medical professionals diagnosed Lisa Montgomery with temporal lobe epilepsy, dissociative disorder, bipolar disorder, and complex post-traumatic stress disorder (a type of PTSD developed by people who have suffered sustained and overwhelming threat to their physical safety, such as child soldiers and war refugees). Social services knew the family because of Lisa Montgomery’s struggle to care for them and her progressive mental health issues.ĭuring Lisa Montgomery’s trial for the murder of Bobbie Jo Stinnett, Montgomery’s defense team presented almost none of this history. Still, nothing happened.Īt 18, Lisa married her stepbrother, Carl Boman, who would routinely film himself raping and sexually torturing her. D uring Judy and Jack’s divorce proceedings, Lisa Montgomery testified to the abuse in open court. The cousin believed her stories, but he failed to report it or open an investigation. She told her cousin, a deputy sheriff, what was being done to her. Lisa’s school performance dropped so much she was put into special education classes, yet her teachers did not report the abuse they suspected was the cause of her academic difficulties and growing tendency to be completely dissociated. Men would beat her for “doing it wrong” and urinate on her when they were finished. Men gang raped Lisa Montgomery throughout her teenage years. Lisa Montgomery’s mother, Judy Shaughnessy, would pimp Lisa to men in exchange for money and services. He would kick, punch, strangle and rape her. Lisa Montgomery’s stepfather, Jack Kleiner, started raping Lisa. Her fear for her sister’s safety was not misplaced. Diane was so upset at leaving Lisa behind that she became hysterical and vomited all over the car. Social services took Montgomery’s half-sister, Diane Mattingly, after a male friend of the girls’ mother raped the child. The only thing more alarming than what she suffered is just how many opportunities there were to put an end to it, to rescue her as her sister was rescued. How Lisa came to be a murderer appears to be tied up with her history of abuse. She was the only one who faced the death penalty for it. Lisa was not the only woman imprisoned in the US for killing a pregnant mother and kidnapping her baby. Ten cases were recorded in the US between 20. Fetal abduction is well-documented, even in recent history. Lisa Montgomery strangled Bobbie Jo Stinnett - eight months pregnant at the time - and cut Stinnett’s unborn baby daughter out of her womb, kidnapping the infant to pass off as her own. Lisa Montgomery’s case has drawn international attention, particularly in recent weeks, owing to the horrific crime she committed and the savage brutality of the abuse she suffered from a young age. She was only the fourth woman to face federal execution in the US, and the first in 67 years. In the early hours of 13 January 2021, following a Supreme Court ruling to overturn the stay of execution granted by a lower court, the federal government put Lisa Montgomery to death for the murder of 23-year-old Bobbie Jo Stinnett. The furore is not purely about the death penalty itself, but about the morality of using it to punish a woman suffering from severe mental illness resulting from the most heinous history of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. The push by the US federal government to execute Lisa Montgomery before Trump leaves office on 20 January 2021 has caused outrage even among people who support capital punishment in principle.
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