Lisa Montgomery the woman who killed an expectant Mother has been executed in the US. How does Mums.chat feel about that justice?

[DinosaurChickens]

I'm OK with it as justice, as a woman of much violence and hardship I don't give a free pass to a planned and evil act of murder under the auspices of 'hard life' I'd be a lot less OK was it unplanned and a psychotic break type incident. It wasn't, she planned every detail of what she did and I'm good with her getting the chair or gun for what she did to the Mother that she groomed and killed and the family who had to live with that as life facts for ever.

Frankly I'm glad this woman has had her life taken away. She planned and enacted inconceivable evil on an innocent.

I have spent a good portion of this evening reading people who have NEVER lived with violence and abuse using that as an excuse for a woman who planned the grooming and the murder of the worst and cruelest sort.

There is absolutely NO EXCUSE for doing this sort of shit in life beyond a psychotic break, schizophrenia.

Anything else is to me frankly an enacted evil and a community and a society has every right to choose to end the life and participation in life of someone who has done this to another human being.

Had this happened in my community and they needed someone, a woman and a Mother to pull the trigger.
I'd pull the trigger and hate being the person asked, but I would do it because I believe that some people need to leave life when they have taken life in a way that makes them unfit to claim any right to live.

I believe there are some things that are unforgivable in this life. Baby rape and murder is one and cutting a baby from a woman you have groomed to come to you in trust in order to murder, is another.

I'm sorry for her prior life hardships, but what she did is executionable for me.

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

I'm a bit uneasy about the way this was hurried through. On the one hand, I can understand her victim's family feeling that the death penalty was the only justice possible. On the other, it's chilling to read of her childhood and of an upbringing that the word 'horrific' doesn't even begin to cover. It's possible, I think, to condemn her utterly appalling crime, and also see that her life was a tragedy. I also think that had she been in the UK, she would have been placed in a secure hospital, not prison. She was a dangerous woman, but she was also severely psychiatrically disturbed.

I'm against the death penalty in principle. My reasoning is that death is such a final, such an absolute punishment, that even one miscarriage of justice is too many. 'Beyond reasonable doubt' is not a high enough threshold of proof for the death penalty; only absolute certainty will do, and absolute certainty without omniscience is impossible.

 

[DinosaurChickens]

I'm a bit uneasy about the way this was hurried through. On the one hand, I can understand her victim's family feeling that the death penalty was the only justice possible. On the other, it's chilling to read of her childhood and of an upbringing that the word 'horrific' doesn't even begin to cover. It's possible, I think, to condemn her utterly appalling crime, and also see that her life was a tragedy. I also think that had she been in the UK, she would have been placed in a secure hospital, not prison. She was a dangerous woman, but she was also severely psychiatrically disturbed.

I'm against the death penalty in principle. My reasoning is that death is such a final, such an absolute punishment, that even one miscarriage of justice is too many. 'Beyond reasonable doubt' is not a high enough threshold of proof for the death penalty; only absolute certainty will do, and absolute certainty without omniscience is impossible.

There is no miscarriage of justice or doubt in this one though Romanes. It is an open and shut case with zero doubt.
I do see her life was a tragedy but there are thousands of us who grow up with massive amounts of abuse who do not plan and enact the deaths of others.
Abuse is not an excuse. That argument makes EVERY abused person a 'potential' murderer, is that right? Is that reasonable?

She was not severely psychiatrically disturbed enough to not be able to online groom, plan and make friends with the woman she intended to kill and slit open to steal an in womb baby.

How would holing her up in a max secure prison for the rest of her life make any of it OK? Do they let her out in 20 years? Should they? She crossed a line that is a line that no basic human community anywhere in the world would accept. She would die instantly from Kenya to Kurdistan having done this.

Are we just so much better because we Western Countries have become so squeamish about ending the life of a human being who behaves like a nightmare horror, like a monster. Are we deciding based on a morality that relies on it not being our Grandchild and our daughter because what if it was?

This woman needed 'putting down' no human who does this as a 'planned and executed' thing ought to be left to live. I'm sorry, but I am not that squeamish about death, we all die eventually and I think someone who has done this ought to be going on short order.

I'd be good with it and have zero moral issue either. She brought it on herself via her planning to kill, not via her abuse.
All my sympathy lies with the dead Mother, the baby and the family who have to live with this monsters actions for the rest of their lives.

And it DOES take a monster to groom a pregnant woman to come to a place of death and knives and a baby being cut from a dying woman's body. I'm glad she's been executed.

Having said that I do agree with you re death penalty and piss poor justice. It is a historical fact. But not in this case.

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

Abuse is not an excuse. That argument makes EVERY abused person a 'potential' murderer, is that right? Is that reasonable?

Every one of us is a 'potential' murderer in theory (yeah, I know that sounds ridiculous, but hear me out). For the enormous majority of us who have neither the adverse life events, the will or the opportunity (for lack of a better expression), the likelihood is nearly non-existent. Severe abuse raises that likelihood. Only a minority of abused individuals will go on to murder, but most murderers will have suffered some form of severe abuse. It's not an excuse; nothing's an excuse for murder, but we have a responsibility to understand what shaped such a warped and dangerous personality. It's no great surprise to read that she was, figuratively and literally, fucked up at an early age.

As for psychiatric disturbance, I'm not sure about how various mental illnesses affect legal responsibility, but I'm fairly sure that antisocial personality disorders don't affect the ability to plan and carry out crimes. I also think it's possible to have paranoid and delusional ideas and appear very good at handling other people - this isn't what I'd call sanity. Nor is it an 'excuse' for her crime. No judge in the land would have given her less than a full life sentence (whether in Broadmoor or HMP) with no possibility of release. I also think that there's a good chance she might have topped herself in the meantime, like the 'mother' of poor little Daniel Pelka. Don't get me wrong, Lisa Montgomery isn't exactly a great loss to humankind.

But as far as capital punishment is concerned, this is paradoxically the kind of easy case that makes bad law. The law is at best a blunt instrument of justice and all too frequently an ass. I don't trust it with the death penalty.

 

[Hanid27]

I'm a bit uneasy about the way this was hurried through. On the one hand, I can understand her victim's family feeling that the death penalty was the only justice possible. On the other, it's chilling to read of her childhood and of an upbringing that the word 'horrific' doesn't even begin to cover. It's possible, I think, to condemn her utterly appalling crime, and also see that her life was a tragedy. I also think that had she been in the UK, she would have been placed in a secure hospital, not prison. She was a dangerous woman, but she was also severely psychiatrically disturbed.

I'm against the death penalty in principle. My reasoning is that death is such a final, such an absolute punishment, that even one miscarriage of justice is too many. 'Beyond reasonable doubt' is not a high enough threshold of proof for the death penalty; only absolute certainty will do, and absolute certainty without omniscience is impossible.

I'm afraid I have not read beyond the headlines in this.

I agree with the death penalty where there is absolute certainty (on the most severe of cases) as "beyond reasonable doubt" still leaves scope for huge miscarriage of justice. But in this case, if what you guys say is correct that there is no doubt. So if laws in that country allow it then yes I support her execution.

Would I sentence her to death though? Probably not but then I haven't read the full facts of this case.

As I've just said I agree with death penalty but only for the most severe of those certainly guilty such as terrorists, mass killers. As there are too many levels of murder just to have a blanket level of punishment, a person killing their partner to escape abuse, self defence (likely to be manslaughter), a person who has psychological problems controllable by medical intervention, a drug addict who killed, these are not the same as a truly evil mass killers or terrorists who should receive death penalty.

 

[lifestooshort123]

I have also only skim read the news reports but can remember the case well and how horrified I was. This was not a psychotic episode but a cunning plot leading to a dreadful act. As execution in this part of the US is legal then, to answer DC's question, I believe justice was served.

 

[Buzzcat]

I am as right wing as they come. I believe in the death penalty in theory, (people like Shamina Begum deserve to swing), but would reluctantly vote against it. If you get it wrong there is no going back.

This person committed a terrible crime. It was a premeditated as it comes.

However this is the person that had no chance at all. She was raped by her caregivers from being a small child. She was prostituted out as a small child. You can not expect somebody reared with no concept of empathy to have empathy. Society failed her.

Life imprisonment - yes, and I think life should mean life in most cases. I regularly rage at the pathetic sentencing in this country.

Trump is on a rampage abusing his power whilst he can. That includes rushing through executions. After the Capitol Hill Riots, and decision making of this nature should have been removed from him.

Did she deserve to die for her crime - yes. Should she have been executed - no.

 

[TabbyTraybake]

She had a dreadful abusive childhood and she was the product of that but she couldn’t ever be changed. What she did was disgusting and evil, she was no good to anyone or anything. I’m sorry but I do feel she needed to be ‘put down’.
Having said that I watched a documentary once about a man on death row and they said about his abusive childhood and they showed a picture of this sweet little boy and I just wanted to go back in time and scoop him up, to save him from all that and what he would become. It’s so so sad.

 

[HelenDamnation]

I don't agree with the death penalty. It is more revenge than justice, in my view, and has no place in a civilised society.
I think I'm possibly in the minority here...

 

[CharliesAngel]

Having watched the movie that was based on a true story called "Just Mercy", what I think is this. There is a disproportionate number of black people in prison and on death row in America. They appear to like to lock up people because "they look guilty" rather than giving everyone a fair and non-biased day in court. I also think that the death penalty should only be used as an absolute deterrent and last resort and that life without the possibility of parole would be a better option in some cases. I also think that there are some cases that are so vile, so horrid and evil that the world is a better place without them being in it and the death penalty is a suitable sentence to be handed down.

This case however is not a race related case.
This case is about how a woman was calculating and evil beyond belief by murdering another woman and cutting open her belly and taking her unborn child from her womb.
There were plenty of opportunities for this woman to stop. Even when she was cutting her, she could have stopped. But she didn't. I don't put much stock in her circumstances as a child leading to this either. There are other people who have damaged childhoods but don't end up doing what she did.
In this situation, the death penalty was not only suitable but warranted.

 

[Buzzcat]

@CharliesAngel - you see whilst I recognise that that some people can have horrendous childhoods and not become murderous. There was research carried out on Psychopathy, that showed clearly that many people have the traits, but the key factor on whether you become a psychopathic murderer or serial killer, or just an unpleasant person was whether you had an appropriate upbringing.

Unimaginable crime, and never walking free again - yes. Executing her just because Trump was in a tantrum about losing the presidency- no.

 

[DingADong]

I agree with the death penalty because while it's a big, big shame that society had failed her, some people are just too damaged to be saved. They will just hurt more people, not to mention they will cost the government a lot of money, the money that could go for better causes, for decent people. Everyone is allowed small mistakes, but this is one huge, evil, unforgiveable one.

 

[Planthedgeandtree]

There is the argument that the death penalty should not be carried out in case of a potential miscarriage of justice. I believe that miscarriages of justice are much less likely to happen these days, with the advances in DNA testing and social media.

 

[CharliesAngel]

@Buzzcat - this particular person was on death row long before Trump became president. She could have just as easily had her execution date some time before (but I don't think that Obama was a supporter of the death penalty), or once Trump left office.
I wouldn't put it down to him losing an election but he is a particularly damaged individual in his own right, with personality disorders that would fill many psychological text books many times over. His ego is humongous and doesn't take kindly to being told "No".
I still believe that because of *what* this particular woman did, the sentence she received was warranted. It was just a matter of time before it was carried out.

 

[Buzzcat]

@CharliesAngel - I take on board what you say. The sentence for the crime she committed was undoubtedly warranted. I just think when society has failed somebody as badly as she was failed, the death penalty was a step to far.

Had she not been subjected to such horrendous abuse as a child, then the psychopathy might not have manifested.

I have zero problem with life meaning life. She should never have walked free again.

We probably need to agree to disagree on this one.
i