Washington
The US is to execute a female federal inmate for the first time in almost 70 years, the Justice Department said.
Lisa Montgomery strangled a pregnant woman in Missouri before cutting out and kidnapping the baby in 2004.
She is due to be given a lethal injection in Indiana on 12 January. The last woman to be executed by the US government was Bonnie Heady, who died in a gas chamber in Missouri in 1953, according to the Death Penalty Information Centre.
US Attorney General William Barr said the crimes were “especially heinous murders”. Last year, the Trump administration said it would resume federal executions.
In December 2004, Montgomery drove from Kansas to the home of Bobbie Jo Stinnett, in Missouri, purportedly to purchase a puppy, according to a Department of Justice press release.—AP
