death row

Lisa Montgomery, 1st Woman to Face Federal Execution in Decades: Lawyers Have COVID, Seek Delay

Her lawyers say in a lawsuit that they are ill because Attorney General Bill Barr "recklessly scheduled Mrs. Montgomery’s execution in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic"

Prison cells line a hall at the Ellis death row unit in Huntsville Prison in Huntsville, Texas.
Per-Anders Pettersson/Getty Images

Lawyers for Lisa Montgomery, the first woman to face the federal death penalty in decades, asked for a delay in her execution because they caught coronavirus while working on her case, NBC News reports.

Montgomery was convicted of strangling a Missouri woman who was eight months pregnant woman in 2007 and taking her unborn baby, who survived.

She is now the only woman facing federal execution after Attorney General William Barr scheduled her for lethal injection in Indiana on Dec. 8.

Her lawyers, Amy Harwell and Kelley Henry, said in a lawsuit filed Thursday that because Barr scheduled Montgomery's execution during the pandemic, requiring the two attorneys to travel from Nashville to Texas twice in October and again earlier this month, both of them tested positive for the virus earlier this month.

"Each round trip involved two plane flights, transit through two airports, hotel stays, and interaction with dozens of people including airline attendants, car rental employees, passengers, and prison guards," the court document said.

Read the full story on NBCNews.com

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