US executes 1st woman put on death row since 1953

ANKARA

The US executed 52-year-old Lisa Montgomery, who was put on federal death row in 2008 after sentenced for murdering a pregnant woman in 2004, by lethal injection in the state of Indiana in the first hours of Wednesday.

Montgomery cut out the unborn child from the mother's womb and kidnapped the survived baby.

Her execution marked the first woman execution done by the federal government in nearly 70 years and she was the only woman on the federal list.

A last-ditch effort of her attorneys has been rejected by the Supreme Court late Tuesday, in which the attorneys defended that a competency hearing should take place to prove that she has a severe mental illness, in the hope to make Montgomery ineligible for the penalty.

She was the 11th prisoner to be executed by lethal injection under outgoing President Donald Trump's administration, which resumed federal executions after 17 years.