Lisa Montgomery: the only woman on federal death row

Brut America

The only woman on federal death row is set to be executed at the start of January. Here's why Lisa Montgomery's sister is asking President Trump to spare her life...

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00:00I'm not asking for her to be out of jail.

00:03I understand what she's done was horrific.

00:14But as a sister,

00:18as a sister, I want her here.

00:30As it stands, I think she will be the first person that they try to execute in 2021.

00:39And that in and of itself, I think, is symbolic of a degree of barbarity and cruelty

00:47that seems to harken back to a much more,

00:56a much more primitive era in human existence.

01:16When the abuse started, I stepped in to take the abuse so that she wouldn't have to endure it.

01:33And I ended up getting taken away about eight and a half by the state of Kansas.

01:40But Lisa never had that.

01:42So when I left at age eight and a half, it went to her.

01:48So the abuse continued on for her all the way into adulthood, into her first marriage,

01:57whom he perpetuated all the abuse that she had endured during her childhood.

02:06Though as a child, she was sex trafficked by her mother.

02:10She was raped over a period of years by her stepfather,

02:14who built a special room for her on the side of their trailer

02:19so that he and his friends could go in and rape her without anyone else noticing.

02:26So she now is somebody who, because of this repeated trauma,

02:31has a psychotic disorder that prevents her from maintaining contact with reality

02:38unless she has very heavy psychotropic medication.

02:43There's nobody else on death row who presents with that history of trauma.

02:57My heart definitely goes out to the family.

03:11I know that they were hurting then.

03:14They are hurting now.

03:17There are two families that have been destroyed by this,

03:22and their family has definitely been destroyed by this.

03:26And I completely understand.

03:30But the thing is, is that she has mental illness.

03:37And you add mental illness, and then you add the sexual abuse, the mental abuse,

03:43the gang rapes that continued on and on, the physical abuse.

03:50She broke.

03:52She literally broke.

03:54She is now on the right kind of medication before she was not.

04:06And now she is realizing the depth of what has happened.

04:14She has great remorse over it.

04:18I just don't feel like putting her to death is justice.

04:24So

04:44we know that this government is in favor of the death penalty.

04:48We know that they are executing more people than any government before them

04:54for the last 130 years.

04:58But we still never believed they would try to execute Ms. Montgomery.

05:02And that is because her case presents such a powerful, compelling story for clemency.

05:19So

05:29why did they schedule her execution out of out of all the other people?

05:38So the ask of President Trump, it's a very small ask.

05:48It's not saying, you know, pardon Lisa Montgomery the way other people have been pardoned.

05:54It's not saying, you know, release her.

05:57It's saying, let her live the rest of her life in prison.

06:00I'm begging you as a sister, but as a survivor, also,

06:05I'm begging you to look at the torture that she had lived and to grant her clemency

06:14and to let her live her life out.

06:16I'm not asking you to release her.

06:19Just give her life.

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