Lawyers for only woman on federal death row catch COVID after visit to Fort Worth prison
Two attorneys representing the only woman in the country with a federal death sentence likely caught COVID-19 from the Fort Worth prison where the woman is being held, according to a motion filed by the woman’s legal team on Thursday.
Lisa Montgomery is scheduled to be executed on Dec. 8 and is currently awaiting transfer at FMC Carswell. Montgomery was convicted in 2007 of killing an eight-months pregnant woman in Missouri and cutting her unborn child from her womb. Various advocacy groups are fighting for clemency for Montgomery, who has a history of severe mental illness and extreme sexual abuse.
Montgomery’s attorneys filed for the emergency injunction on her death sentence after two of her lawyers tested positive for COVID-19. The motion says that unless the court issues a restraining order, “Mrs. Montgomery will suffer irreparable injury, for she will be deprived of any meaningful opportunity for review of her clemency request.”
Two of Montgomery’s lawyers, Amy Harwell and Kelley Henry, traveled from Nashville to Fort Worth on Oct. 19 to meet with Montgomery and finish her clemency application. Three days after their second visit to Carswell, they both started experiencing COVID-19 symptoms. Their illness has made it impossible to work on Montgomery’s clemency application as her execution deadline looms, the lawsuit says.
“With just days left to complete Mrs. Montgomery’s clemency application and her mental state rapidly deteriorating, neither attorney can visit her,” the lawsuit says. “Nor can they complete the necessary work given their exhaustion and compromised thinking.”
In capital cases, clemency — a pardon or the reduction of penalties for a crime — is seen as the final remedy to prevent miscarriages of justice when other appeals have been exhausted.
COVID at Carswell
Montgomery’s mental state worsened due to the conditions she faced at Carswell, according to the lawsuit. She had been placed in a suicide cell and her underwear was taken away.
“As a victim of repeated rape, incest, and child sex trafficking, the loss of her underwear was particularly traumatic,” the suit says.
During the trip, Harwell and Henry used rental cars, stayed in hotels and interacted with prison staff at FMC Carswell, which has a history of coronavirus cases among inmates, on Oct. 29 and Nov. 2.
“Of course, there is no way to know with certainty whether they got it on the plane or at the prison,” attorney Sandra Babcock said. “But given the number of cases coming out of Carswell and the exploding epidemic out of Fort Worth, it seems really likely that’s where they got it.”
Carswell currently has two cases of coronavirus among inmates and three among staff, according to the Bureau of Prisons’ COVID-19 dashboard. However, women incarcerated at the prison say the official numbers do not reflect actual cases at the prison.
Sandra Shoulders, who has been incarcerated at Carswell for two years on a drug-related offense, said staff are no longer testing inmates for the virus in order to keep the official numbers down. Some women who do have symptoms are afraid to speak up because they fear being put in the quarantine unit, where women described being “treated like dogs” in a lawsuit against Carswell.
Harwell and Henry started experiencing COVID-19 symptoms three days after their second visit with Montgomery at Carswell. Some of Montgomery’s family members have also tested positive for the virus after visiting with her, Babcock said.
The ACLU alleged that Montgomery faces cruel and torturous conditions at Carswell in a lawsuit filed on Nov. 6. The suit names Attorney General William Barr, the federal Bureau of Prisons, and the wardens of Terre Haute Correctional Complex and Federal Medical Center at Carswell as defendants.
After the BOP announced her execution date on Oct. 16, Montgomery was transferred to a “cold, single cell with constant bright lights” and is constantly watched by male guards, even when she uses the bathroom, according to the ACLU lawsuit.
Montgomery’s case and sentence
In December 2004, Montgomery drove from Kansas to Missouri, where she strangled Bobbie Jo Stinnett, cut open her body, and kidnapped her baby. Her conviction and sentence were appealed but upheld, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. Montgomery is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on Dec. 8 at U.S. Penitentiary Terre Haute, Indiana.
Various advocacy groups and current and former prosecutors sent 1,000 letters to President Donald Trump on Nov. 11, asking him to grant clemency to Montgomery based on her mental illness. Advocates argue a history of abuse, including being trafficked by her mother, caused the physical, emotional and sexual trauma.
“The crime itself is terribly tragic, and she has accepted full responsibility for that,” Babcock said. “But it simply is the truth that this crime would never have been committed but for her history of severe mental illness that was compounded by her trauma disorder that arose from the sexual violence that she experienced.”
Babcock said she was “stunned” that Barr directed the Bureau of Prisons to schedule Montgomery’s execution during the pandemic, especially since her mental state is questionable.
“This is a situation of the government’s creation,” Babcock said. “There is no reason why they had to schedule her execution at the peak of the global pandemic. The risk they put these attorneys in is unconscionable.”
This story was originally published November 16, 2020 at 9:36 PM with the headline "Lawyers for only woman on federal death row catch COVID after visit to Fort Worth prison."
