Daily US Times: An appeals court in the United States has lifted a stay of execution on the only woman awaiting a federal death penalty. In 2004, Lisa Montgomery strangled a pregnant woman in Missouri before cutting out and kidnapping the baby.

If the execution goes ahead, Montgomery will be the first female federal inmate to be put to death in almost 70 years.

Her execution date was originally set for last month but a stay order was put in place after her attorneys contracted Covid-19.

It was then rescheduled for 12 January by the US Justice Department, but her lawyers argued that the date could not be set while a stay was in place.

A court sided with her attorneys, stopping an order from the director of the Bureau of Prisons scheduling her death.

But a panel of judges concluded of Friday that the director had acted under the law, allowing the execution to take place.

Lisa Montgomery’s legal team said they will file a petition for the judges to reconsider their ruling.

The last woman to be executed by the fedeal government in the US was Bonnie Heady, who died in a gas chamber in Missouri in 1953, Death Penalty Information Center data shows.

Federal executions had been on pause for 17 years before President Trump ordered them to resume earlier last year.

If the remaining executions go ahead, President Donald Trump will have overseen the most executions by a US president in more than a century.

Montgomery’s execution date is just days before Joe Biden takes office in January 21.

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