1/ The execution of #LisaMontgomery would have been unjust at any time, but the fact that it was allowed to go forward last night wasn’t just tragic —it was a staggering violation of our constitution and values.
2/Lisa suffered horrific sexual violence and torture and deserved our mercy, not a punishment judged immoral by most of the world.
3/ In these last distorted days of Trump’s failed presidency, with impeachment proceedings underway and elected leaders from both parties speaking out about the failed coup, Trump didn’t even bother to respond to her clemency petition.
4/ The courts and elected leaders ignored public health guidance and pleas from corrections officers to the American Medical Association to not risk lives to carry out her execution during the pandemic.
5/ I am angered and sickened by all of this. And I am outraged by SCOTUS’s unprincipled and unconstitutional decision to yet again greenlight an execution without offering any analysis, despite the stay decisions of the lower courts.
6/ SCOTUS broke one of the few constitutional guarantees we afford death row prisoners: we will not execute people who are so mentally ill they lack the rational understanding of their execution.
7/ Lisa Montgomery, as all who knew her predicted, decompensated and lost touch with reality as her execution date neared and as she was transported to an all-male prison.
8/ Judge Hanlon, a conservative appointee of Donald Trump, ruled that she deserved a competency hearing before her execution could proceed. She didn’t get one and SCOTUS didn’t even bother to explain why.
9/ The AP reporter who witnessed her execution wrote that Lisa Montgomery looked “bewildered” on the gurney, and the female executioner had to “gently remove” Lisa’s face mask to ask her about her last statement. She had none.
10/ The execution team, like everyone else, knew Lisa Montgomery was dissociating, terrified, traumatized, and out of touch with reality, but they pushed the poison through her body anyway.
11/ Lisa Montgomery's execution degrades all of us.
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