Lisa Montgomery

Inside The Race To Save The Only Woman On Federal Death Row | HuffPost

This woman’s case makes me sad and makes me even more anti-death penalty. While her crime was heinous, she was tortured throughout her childhood which broke her brain. Her half-sister got taken away from her horrible step-mother, and was adopted by a normal family and managed to heal emotionally after having a horrible first 8 years of her life. Lisa didn’t have that chance though. Very sad. not sure what killing her accomplished.

This article was written before she was put to death on Tuesday.

I never really understood the logic for death penalty.

What confuses me even more is that having a mental illness excuses you from being executed.
In my view, a permanent mental illness should be the only logical reason to exercise death penalty, because there’s no chance of rehabilitation, even if we tried, and there’s simply no place for a mentally ill person who is capable of killing in this world, as sad as it is.

Trumps flurry of executions is weird. It’s like he’s taking his frustrations out with these.

she needed SOMEONE to care for her. she had such a shit life. :frowning:

Is there someone willing to do that though?

she had 4 kids, and also her half sister were sad that she was being put to death. her sister was fighting for her.

but really, the system failed her. child protective services should have stepped in when she was a child. she told people, they ignored her.

Society can only do so much though, and even then the system definitely isn’t perfect. Sometimes we have to accept that unfortunate happens to unfortunate people and we may not be able to remedy things in this life time.

huh? she told people in power that she was raped. a judge did nothing. child protective services needed to take her away from her mother. there isn’t just “nothing you can do” when a child is being tortured by her parents. you take them away.

so, instead of letting her live out her life in prison, what does it accomplish by putting her to death?

yes the system failed her when she was a kid, not arguing that

I’m not a proponent of life sentences, it feels like a waste of resources for no apparent end goal. Either one can be rehabilitated, or one can’t. I grant most people the chance of being rehabilitated, and thus I’m opposed to most death penalties. But those who are mentally ill are a lost cause for the most part, since there’s no real way to reason with them back into reality.

she likely cannot be rehabilitated. so, what does putting her to death accomplish? you’re wasting resources with all of the appealed court cases. i think i’ve read that it’s more expensive for death row than life in prison. the point of putting someone to death has nothing to do with wasting resources. it’s for revenge, which is stupid. normal people don’t kill each other, therefore the death penalty isn’t a deterrent.

I’m not pro-death penalty, but I do think it’s generally overused. For me, if you’re going to use it then a few criteria should be satisfied before it’s considered:

  1. The defendant admits guilt.
  2. It can be demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt - in other words, there is no question - that the defendant is indeed guilty.
  3. The defendant is such a risk to the rest of society that, if let out into the public, the defendant is a very high risk to kill again.

Here? Montgomery satisfied the first 2, she probably satisfies #3. Is her mental illness enough to void consideration of the death penalty? I have a problem generally with putting the mentally ill to death even when the above 3 conditions are met, but I also think there’s still situations where sorry, you’re just that much of a threat to society we need to do away with you or sorry, your crime was so heinous you forfeited your right to live further and we just need to put you in the ground. Where that line falls, … well, that’s why we have a thread going here.

I don’t like that the government tried to put her to death while she was infected with coronavirus, given the already established position on executions and illness elsewhere. I’m not quite upset given the heinous nature of her crime, but I could have been fine with commuting to life in prison if the victim’s family agreed and Montgomery agreed to waive any chance of ever getting out of prison and to get whatever mental help was deemed necessary. If the victims didn’t accede or Montgomery rejected either of those two conditions, … sorry, I’ve got no problem putting her to death.

That said, I’m more pissed that the government chose her to go when I can think of at least half a dozen others - 3 in the military - who should have gone first, one who should have been disposed of ~32 years ago and all of them are clear dangers to society if they ever get let back out in public.

Are you sure about this? I don’t think that Lisa Montgomery had coronavirus. A few others on death row had their sentence delayed because they have coronavirus. Also, Lisa Montgomery’s lawyer had coronavirus, and therefore had her death sentence also temporarily delayed.

I guess I’m okay with the death penalty with someone who is pure evil, but in the case of someone like this, she had a horrible life and is obviously mentally ill and brain damaged. seems wrong.

I might be thinking of her lawyers. I know two others had their executions delayed because they tested positive for coronavirus, I thought I saw somewhere that she had it as well and had recovered and the recovery was deemed sufficient to go ahead with the execution. But, I could be off on that - and if so, I’ll stand corrected.

She definitely fell into that gray area of she was clearly mentally ill, but her crime was incredibly heinous so maybe it would have come down to “would she have done it again if let back out in public?” And while I think we could easily impose a condition that she couldn’t get out without mental help, I don’t know if she ever gets enough mental help that she’s able to go back out in public. If she did get to that point, then you go back to her crime was incredibly heinous and you say that she’s never getting released as a result.

If we’re going off the “cruel, unusual punishment” standard, one might argue that putting her to death by lethal injection was less cruel than trying to get her head straight and she lives another 20, 25, 30+ years with all the trauma from her early life.

It is only less cruel if she wanted the death penalty. sounds like she didn’t.

she should never have been let out of prison. her crime was just too heinous, and i don’t see how someone like that wouldn’t be a risk to do it again. there are lifers in prison.

but the death penalty wasn’t about being less cruel. it was about revenge against her.

I am wholly against the death penalty. Many of the recent federal executions have been weighing on my heart.

Well I definitely don’t support the death penalty for the purpose of revenge. I don’t support punishment for revenge period.

But, if she is indeed permanently mentally ill, and there’s no society for her to be in where she doesn’t pose a threat to other people, putting her to sleep is kind of like putting down a braindead person. It’s definitely not ideal, but choices need to be made.

she had been in prison for 16 years. i’m not under the impression that she tried to kill anyone while in prison. so let her stay there.

well, as it stands now, the death penalty is for revenge.

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and the federal death penalty will be put on hold once Biden takes office. Trump rushed these through. he is scum. how many people is trump responsible for killing?