A "WOMB raider" killer who cut a baby from inside her victim WILL be executed later this month after her stay of execution was lifted.
Lisa Montgomery strangled heavily-pregnant Bobbie Jo Stinnett in Missouri before carving out and kidnapping her child in 2004.
A court has now cleared the way for the 53-year-old – the only woman on federal death row – to be executed before Joe Biden takes office on January 20.
She is now poised to become the first female federal inmate to be put to death in almost 70 years.
Montgomery's December execution was earlier delayed after her lawyers caught Covid-19.
It was then rescheduled for January 12 but Montgomery's legal team successfully argued that the date could not be set while a stay was in place.
However, a new court ruling has concluded a lower court judge got it wrong when he then vacated Montgomery's execution date.
The notorious killer is currently locked up at an all-female prison in Fort Worth, Texas.
The mother-of-four had been scheduled to be put to death at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana.
However, a judge delayed the execution after her virus-stricken attorneysasked him to extend the time to file a clemency petition.
Meaghan VerGow, an attorney for Montgomery, said her legal team would now ask for the full appeals court to review the case and insisted Montgomery should not be executed on January 12.
Montgomery was convicted of killing 23-year-old Bobbie Jo in the northwest Missouri town of Skidmore in December 2004.
She used a rope to strangle Stinnett, who was eight months pregnant, and then cut the baby girl from the womb with a kitchen knife, authorities said.
Montgomery, who was 36 at the time, had met Stinnett online and pretended to be a pregnant woman named "Darlene Fischer” to bond with her.
She had researched home births and how to perform cesarean sections online before the attack.
"There was blood everywhere. She was laying on the floor," Stinnett's mom, Becky Harper, tearfully said at Montgomery's trial.
"It looked like she exploded all over the place."
Montgomery took the child with her and attempted to pass the girl off as her own, prosecutors revealed at her trial.
Lawyers for Montgomery have previously argued their client had mental health issues and had "suffered repeated sexual and physical abuse".
Biden opposes the death penalty and his spokesman, TJ Ducklo, has said he would work to end its use.
However, the President Elect has not said whether he will halt federal executions after he takes office.
The Justice Department resumed federal executions last year after a 17-year hiatus and has put more people to death more people than the last 50 years.
The last woman to be executed by the US government was Bonnie Heady, who died in a gas chamber in Missouri in 1953.
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