EU Regrets Execution Of Woman With Mental Disorder In US - EEAS

MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 14th January, 2021) The European Union regrets the execution of a female murder convict with a mental disorder in the United States, calling for clemency on all other Federal capital punishment cases until the departure of the current administration, the EU External Action Service (EEAS) said on Wednesday.

Lisa Montgomery was executed earlier in the day for the brutal murder of a pregnant woman in 2004. Her lawyers claimed that the 52-year-old was mentally ill.

"The European Union deeply regrets the execution at a federal level in the United States of the first woman in almost seven decades. The EU had called for clemency to be granted to Lisa Montgomery taking into consideration international law and internationally accepted minimum standards that should be respected regarding people with mental disorders," the EEAS spokesperson said in a statement.

While vowing solidarity with the victims of crime and their families, the spokesperson said that death penalty was "incompatible with human dignity and the right to life, constitutes an inhuman and degrading treatment, and does not have any proven deterrent effect."

"Miscarriages of justice, inevitable in any judicial system, are irreversible. The EU calls on the US administration to reverse its decision to carry out the remaining federal-level executions during the last days of the current administration," the statement read.

Capital punishment at the federal level was resumed in the United States last July after a 17-year pause, albeit separate US states never stopped practicing it. Aside from the United States, death penalty is legal in such countries as China, Iran, Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia, among others.