REVEALED: Before 2020, there had been three federal executions in 60 years. Then Trump put 13 people to death in six months. Inside Trump's race to execute every prisoner he could ⬇️
, culminating in the Jan. 6 ransacking of the U.S. Capitol. And though Trump did show some mercy on his way out the door, it was largely reserved for political cronies such as Paul Manafort and Roger Stone.
His public statements on the topic were a nudge to the Justice Department, and Trump’s chief law-enforcement officers took note. In 2018, his first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, began the process of lifting the two-decade, unofficial moratorium on federal executions by issuing a memo that urged federal prosecutors to use existing death-penalty statutes against drug traffickers.
That means Trump never talked with Barr about Lisa Montgomery, a deeply mentally ill and traumatized person who became the. Or Wesley Ira Purkey, whose execution was delayed a day by a judge who ruled that his advancing Alzheimer’s disease had left Purkey unaware of why he was being executed. Or Daniel Lewis Lee, Dustin Lee Honken, Lezmond Charles Mitchell, Keith Dwayne Nelson, William Emmett LeCroy Jr.
More than a decade after Bernard’s 2000 trial, his appellate lawyers uncovered new information about the proceedings. They allege prosecutors withheld critical evidence supporting the idea that, far from a leader directing the murders, Bernard was just a confused teenager following instructions from his place in the gang’s lowest tier.
In another administration, that might have been enough to save Bernard’s life. But in Trump’s world, it barely registered. In late November, it looked like the team might finally have an in to Trumpworld via Kim Kardashian. They reached her through a string of celebrity and activist connections, and, after she was briefed on his case, she called Bernard. She was moved by his story, and the two became fast friends in the final weeks of his life.
Still, the letter had no discernible effect. For weeks, Bernard’s friends and advocates also reached out to members of Trump’s inner circle, including Ivanka, Jared, and White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, to no avail. And so, in Bernard’s final days, Owen and Carpenter turned to another member of Trump’s first impeachment defense team: celebrity lawyer Alan Dershowitz.
Montgomery’s story is a repository of all the worst this world has to offer. Her crime was unconscionable: In 2004, when Montgomery was 36, she arranged to meet with Bobbie Joe Stennett, a 24-year-old dog breeder who was eight months pregnant. Montgomery had said she wanted to buy a puppy, but instead strangled and stabbed Stennett, and then cut the fetus out of the dead woman’s womb, later attempting to pass the child off as her own.
It’s unclear whether Trump ever read the petition or Mattingly’s letter. On a Wednesday in January 2021, Montgomery’s legal team was preparing for a video meeting with Justice Department attorneys. They had no expectation that the president would grant them leniency, but they were hoping at least to delay the execution, scheduled for Jan. 13, just long enough to give the Biden administration time to stop it.
Harwell was correct. There would be no delay for Montgomery, nor any mercy for a woman who’d known little of it throughout her life. On the night of Jan. 12, the Supreme Court, a third of which had been appointed by Trump, lifted a last-minute stay of execution. “We’ve lost. They’re coming for you,” Harwell remembers telling her client. To this day, Harwell is not convinced that Montgomery fully understood that she was about to die.
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