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A Kansas prison inmate became the first woman to be federally executed in nearly 70 years.

Lisa Montgomery, 52, was given lethal injection in a federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana.

She was pronounced dead on Wednesday at 1:31 a.m. (local time).

The US Supreme Court previously approved the execution.

An appeals court had stopped the execution.

Montgomery had been raped and tortured multiple times as a child, according to her defense lawyers, which exacerbated her mental illness.

Attorney Kelley Henry said she didn't think her client was rational about what's going on.

Prosecutors had accused Montgomery of faking mental illness.

"Anyone who attended the execution of Lisa Montgomery should be ashamed," said Henry.

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Montgomery was convicted of murdering a heavily pregnant woman in 2004 and brutally harvesting the baby.

She was the eleventh inmate to have been executed by lethal injection in Terre Haute since July.

The government of the elected President Donald Trump had resumed executions in federal prisons after 17 years.

She wants to have two more death row inmates executed in her last days in office.

Here, too, judges stopped the execution.

Both prisoners were sick with corona.

If the other two executions are delayed by Trump's end of office on Wednesday next week, they will probably not be carried out for the time being or even canceled entirely.

President-elect Joe Biden is believed to oppose executions in federal prisons.