Earlier this week, attorneys from the Cornell Legislation Faculty Worldwide Human Rights Clinic, arguing on behalf of Montgomery’s attorneys, Amy Harwell and Kelley Henry, requested Choose Randolph Moss to delay the December 8 execution till after the attorneys get well.

On Thursday, Choose Moss delayed Montgomery’s execution till December 31, noting that if the attorneys haven’t recovered from the coronavirus by December 24, they must request extra and skilled counsel to help, in keeping with courtroom paperwork.

The Justice Division declined to touch upon the decide’s ruling.

Attorneys with the Justice Division argued in courtroom earlier this week that the extension request was not essential as one other legal professional ought to take over making ready Montgomery’s petition. Whereas Montgomery has a workforce of attorneys engaged on her case, Harwell and Henry have been the one ones with expertise handing capital punishment circumstances and have been appointed by a federal courtroom decide since 2012 to work on Montgomery’s case.

Henry and Harwell stated within the lawsuit filed in DC District Court docket that because they have been caught off guard when Lawyer Basic William Barr introduced Montgomery’s execution date, they have been rushed to start out her software for clemency. The attorneys additionally filed a request for President Trump to commute her death sentence to life in jail.

“Defendant Barr intentionally scheduled Mrs. Montgomery’s execution throughout the top of the COVID-19 pandemic, with out affording her legal professionals the identical diploma of discover afforded to different death-sentenced prisoners,” in keeping with the lawsuit.

After seeing Montgomery on the federal jail in Texas, each attorneys have been recognized with the coronavirus, regardless of abiding by CDC pointers, in keeping with the lawsuit.

As of Monday, the attorneys have been described by Dr. Mark J. Davis in an affidavit filed Sunday as “functionally incapacitated from efficiency of any skilled work obligations.”

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“I can state with an affordable diploma of medical certainty that the journey to help their shopper, in addition to visiting and offering companies to their shopper, throughout the top of the SARS CoV2 pandemic possible contributed to their current, extreme sickness,” Davis wrote.

Montgomery, who suffers from extreme psychological sickness, is indigent and her solely sources within the Texas jail the place she is being held are a chunk of paper and a crayon, stated Sandra Babcock, who represented Montgomery on behalf of Henry and Harwell. Montgomery will not be in a position to file her personal clemency petition, she added.

“The district courtroom’s ruling offers Lisa Montgomery a significant alternative to organize and current a clemency software after her attorneys get well from COVID,” Babcock wrote in an announcement. “Mrs. Montgomery’s case presents compelling grounds for clemency, together with her historical past as a sufferer of gang rape, incest, and baby intercourse trafficking, in addition to her extreme psychological sickness.”

Montgomery is the primary girl on death row who was anticipated to be executed by the federal authorities in practically 70 years. Montgomery was scheduled to be the ninth particular person to be put to death this yr after the federal government’s 17-year hiatus on executions. She’s anticipated to obtain deadly injection.

She was convicted in 2004 of strangling to death a Missouri girl who was Eight months pregnant, slicing the newborn out and kidnapping it. The infant survived.