Content warning: family abuse, sexual trauma/assault, mental illness, and domestic abuse
Dear MoveOn member,
Without action from President Donald Trump, my sister, Lisa Montgomery, will be executed on January 12, 2021.
Sign the petition to save her life and demand Trump provides a stay of execution.
We have only a matter of weeks to save Lisa's life. Lisa Montgomery—a mentally ill woman who was the victim of gang rapes, child sex trafficking, and domestic violence—was sentenced to death by a jury that never learned the full extent of the sexual violence and physical abuse Lisa endured.1 As a result of her trauma, Lisa is now so unstable that she must take a complex cocktail of medications to prevent full-blown psychosis.
The story of Lisa's life is worse than a nightmare. She was born with permanent brain damage caused by her mother's drinking during pregnancy. A child of extreme poverty, she was also repeatedly raped by her stepfather in the private room he built for her. Lisa was routinely beaten and terrorized by her mother. Lisa's mother trafficked her to men who were allowed to rape Lisa in exchange for utilities and other services. Although this abuse was suspected or known by teachers, a police officer, and a judge, nobody intervened to protect Lisa.2
Lisa's nightmare continued when Lisa married her stepbrother at the urging of her mother at the age of 18. He continued the cycle of abuse, raping and beating her. Not surprisingly, this lifetime of torture exacerbated Lisa's genetic predisposition to mental illness, and it caused her to develop a dissociative disorder and complex post-traumatic stress disorder. She often cannot tell what is real and what is not. She suffers from flashbacks where she relives her rapes.
Before her arrest, Lisa never received treatment for her mental illness, and her symptoms worsened over time. In 2004, in the grip of a psychotic episode, Lisa killed a pregnant woman and took her baby.3,4 Lisa can never undo her crime, but she took responsibility for it and offered to plead guilty and spend her life in prison. The prosecutor rejected this offer and sought the death penalty.
The lifetime of rape and sexual torture that Lisa endured is not an "abuse excuse," as the prosecutor argued at her trial. Her history of abuse helps to explain the depth of her disabilities. Yet the jury never had the chance to consider how her history of devastating trauma has impaired her daily functioning. Courts have rejected Lisa's claims for relief, and her case now rests in the hands of the President.
I am asking President Trump to consider the evidence the jury never heard and to spare her life. Spending the rest of her life in prison is more than adequate punishment for this crime, given Lisa's traumatic history and mental illness.
Will you please help me save my sister's life? Click here to add your name to this petition, and then pass it along to your friends.
Thanks,
—Diane Mattingly, Lisa Montgomery's sister
Sources:
1. "Lisa Montgomery's execution delayed by attorneys' COVID-19 cases, rescheduled for Jan. 12," USA Today, November 23, 2020
https://act.moveon.org/go/147083?t=11&akid=285826%2E10220574%2EfOS3XL
2. "The Case of Lisa Montgomery," Cornell Law School, accessed December 1, 2020
https://act.moveon.org/go/147084?t=13&akid=285826%2E10220574%2EfOS3XL
4. Ibid.
5. "My Baby Sister Lisa Did a Terrible Thing. We Shouldn't Kill Her For It.," Elle, November 23, 2020
https://act.moveon.org/go/147085?t=15&akid=285826%2E10220574%2EfOS3XL
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