Judge Grants Stay of Execution to Missouri Woman on Federal Death Row

A Missouri woman on federal death row has received a stay of execution just hours before she was scheduled to die.

Judge James Hanlon of the US District Court for the Southern District of Indiana granted 52 year old Lisa Montgomery a stay of execution last night to allow the Court to conduct a hearing to determine her competence to be executed.

A date has not yet been set for the competency hearing.

Montgomery was scheduled to die by lethal injection today at a Federal Correctional Complex in Indiana.

She was sentenced to death in 2008 by a Missouri jury for the 2004 murder of a pregnant woman, cutting the fetus out and kidnapping it.

The baby survived.