Death sentence sought for Mo. woman

A federal prosecutor told jurors Thursday that a woman violated an expectant mother in the "most wicked way possible" when she strangled her in December 2004 and cut her baby from her womb.

"The death penalty is reserved for the worst crime," prosecutor Roseann Ketchmark said in her closing argument during the penalty phase of Lisa Montgomery's trial. "This is the worst crime."

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.

The same jurors who found Montgomery guilty will decide whether she should receive life in prison or execution. They went home Thursday without making a decision.

Defense attorney Fred Duchardt, who claims sexual abuse during Montgomery's childhood led to mental illness, asked the jury to spare Montgomery'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."

Ketchmark said Montgomery deserved the death penalty because of the heinousness of the crime and grave risk of death she posed to the baby. She told jurors that after performing a crude Caesarean section on Stinnett with a kitchen knife, Montgomery sought no medical care for the four-weeks-premature infant.

Ketchmark showed jurors crime scene photos highlighting the blows to Stinnett's head, injuries to her elbows, defensive cuts to her hands and strangulation injuries.

"Look at the ragged abdominal cuts," she said. "This is vicious. This defendant mutilated her."

She also highlighted the premeditation that went into the killing, including Internet searches on performing C-sections and e-mails she sent to Stinnett to arrange the fatal meeting.

Earlier Thursday, Chicago psychologist Ruth Kuncel added her support to defense claims that sexual abuse Montgomery suffered as a child led to her mental illness. Defense attorneys have said Montgomery had a mental condition that made her believe she was pregnant and was in a dreamlike, dissociative state at the time of the killing.

Prosecutors contend Montgomery is faking mental illness to aid her defense, but Kuncel said she concluded otherwise.

Kuncel said the abuse Montgomery suffered was especially bad because Montgomery's shy personality caused her to become more withdrawn and that, as the family moved often, Montgomery lacked a strong support system to help her.

She added that Montgomery's stepfather abused her sexually while her mother abused her emotionally.

Prosecutors have noted that few of the many people who have been sexually abused go on to kill.

Under cross-examination, Kuncel refused to say if Montgomery had done anything that showed premeditation, at one point forcing U.S. District Judge Gary Fenner to warn her that she was being "extremely evasive."

As prosecutors listed several examples of evidence against Montgomery and asked if it suggested premeditation, Kuncel repeatedly said, "It may or may not be," even when asked about Montgomery taking a rope, a knife and an umbilical cord clamp to Stinnett's house.