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 Death
sentence mulled in baby theft case
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[October 26, 2007]
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) -- Prosecutors say a woman who killed an expectant mother and cut the baby from her womb is a cold-blooded predator who deserves to die. Defense lawyers say their client is a victim of sexual abuse who should be treated mercifully.
[Caption: This is a file photo of
the booking photo of Lisa Montgomery that was released Dec. 20, 2004, by the Wyandotte
County Sheriff's Department. On Monday, jurors convicted
Lisa Montgomery, 39, of kidnapping resulting in
death in the 2004 attack on 23-year-old Bobbie Jo Stinnett in the
northwest Missouri town of Skidmore. Jurors deliberated for about
four hours before rejecting Montgomery's insanity defense. (AP
Photo/Wyandotte County Sheriff's Department, File)]
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 Jurors began deciding Thursday whether Lisa Montgomery should receive life in prison or execution. They were to resume deliberations Friday.
Montgomery, 39, was convicted Monday of killing Bobbie Jo Stinnett, 23, on Dec. 16, 2004, in the victim's home in the northwest Missouri town of Skidmore. She was arrested in Melvern, Kan., a day after the attack, after she showed off the newborn as her own.
In closing arguments Thursday, prosecutors said Stinnett's killing and mutilation is the kind of crime for which capital punishment is intended.
"The death penalty is reserved for the worst crime," federal prosecutor Roseann Ketchmark told the jury. "This is the worst crime."
Ketchmark argued that Montgomery had violated Stinnett in the "most wicked way possible," then failed to seek medical attention for the infant, who was four weeks shy of her due date.
Defense attorney Fred Duchardt, who claims sexual abuse during Montgomery's childhood led to mental illness, asked the jury to spare his client's life. He said emotional abuse from her mother and sexual abuse from her stepfather "killed Lisa's soul."
"I'm not ashamed to ask you all for mercy," Duchardt told the jury. "I ask for it on behalf of Lisa and all the people who love her."
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 Ketchmark said Montgomery deserved the death penalty because of the heinousness of the crime. She showed jurors crime scene photos highlighting the blows to Stinnett's head, injuries to her elbows, defensive cuts to her hands and strangulation marks.
"Look at the ragged abdominal cuts," she said. "This is vicious. This defendant mutilated her."
Ketchmark highlighted the premeditation that went into the killing, including Internet searches on performing Caesareans and e-mails Montgomery sent to Stinnett to arrange the fatal meeting.
"This defendant is a cold-blooded predator and Bobbie Jo is her prey," she said.
Ketchmark also described how the gruesome death had hurt Stinnett's family, particularly her husband, Zeb, who was forced to raise their daughter alone, and her mother, Becky Harper, who found her daughter's body.
During a break earlier in the day, Harper was seen talking to two of Montgomery's daughters. The exchange ended with an embrace.
[Associated Press; by Heather
Hollingsworth]
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