The Execution of Lisa Montgomery

      On December 16, 2004 36-year-old Lisa M. Montgomery strangled 23-year-old Bobbie Jo Stinnett to death in her Skidmore, Missouri home. Following the murder Montgomery cut open the eight month pregnant victim and removed her unborn child, a baby she intended to pass off as her own. The two women met on an Internet chatroom called "Ratter Chatter."

     On December 17, the day after the murder, FBI agents arrested Montgomery at her farmhouse in Melvern, Kansas. The baby, rushed to a hospital, survived the traumatic event. A federal prosecutor charged Montgomery with the crime of kidnapping resulting in death, a capital offense.  

     Tried in October 2007 the jury found the defendant guilty as charged and recommended the death penalty. On April 4, 2008 the federal judge sentenced Lisa Montgomery to death. Incarcerated at the federal prison complex at Terre Haute, Indiana, she was the only women in the federal system on death row. If executed she would be the fourth woman his U.S. history to be executed by the federal government. 

     Montgomery's execution by lethal injection was scheduled for December 8, 2020. Her appeals attorneys alleged that their client's trial attorneys were incompetent in that they had failed to reveal to jurors the extent of the defendant's mental illness. On this and other procedural issues appeals courts have often ruled in favor of the government.

     Lisa Montgomery was executed on January 13, 2021.

No Place is Safe From Domestic Abuse

     Patrol officers spend much of their time responding to late night and early morning domestic violence calls involving alcohol, drugs, abusive men and battered women. Constant exposure to this underbelly of American culture is one of the drawbacks of police work.

     On January 15, 2012 at 7:40 in the evening police officers in Lower Merion, Pennsylvania, a suburban community outside of Philadelphia, were summoned to a domestic disturbance at an unusual place. The 911 call originated from the maternity ward in Lower Merion's Lankenau Hospital. The victim of the assault (her name was not made public) gave birth two days earlier.

     Richard Lavon Davis Jr. while visiting his girlfriend and the mother of his child became agitated when he and the new mother couldn't agree on the baby's name. Davis, who had been holding the infant, laid it in its crib when the argument heated up. After screaming and cursing he lost complete control of himself. The enraged father kicked a rolling table toward the chair where the mother sat. When she rose to her feet Davis punched her twice in the face knocking her onto the hospital bed. 

     The day after the maternity ward attack Montgomery County Assistant District Attorney Wallis Brooks charged the 23-year-old father with simple assault, a crime that carried a maximum sentence of five years.

     A year later Mr. Davis pleaded guilty to punching the new mother in the maternity ward. On February 15, 2013 Montgomery County Judge Joseph Smyth sentenced him to eight to twenty-three months in the county jail. The sentence included 96 hours of community service and mandatory domestic violence counseling.

     In speaking to the press following the sentencing hearing prosecutor Brooks said, "He assaulted a new mother and his conduct was outrageous. It's absurd that an argument over the name of the child would lead to this kind of physical violence against a defenseless woman who is just recovering from one of nature's most beautiful experiences, the birthing of a child."

     The convicted man's attorney, Gregory Nestor, told reporters that his client was "Quite remorseful about what he did." The lawyer, in speaking highly of his client, said, "That by coming into court and pleading guilty and accepting the sentence...indicates his acceptance of responsibility for his actions."

    The sentence in this case was an insult to criminal justice. If Davis was capable of hitting the mother of his 2-day-old baby what else was he capable of? 

Murdering Jocelyn Earnest: A Circumstantial Case

     On December 19, 2007 a friend discovered the body of 38-year-old Jocelyn Earnest just inside the front door of her house in Pine Bluff, Virginia. The victim had been shot in the back of the head. Next to her body lay a .357 magnum revolver and a typewritten suicide note that in part read:

     To Mom
          I'm sorry for what I've done. Please forgive me. Wes [the victim's estranged husband] has put us in such a financial bind--can't recover. My new love will not leave the family.
     Love,
     Jocelyn

     The heat inside Earnest's house had been jacked up to 90 degrees and there were no signs of forced entry. The dead woman's dog, a black Lab, was locked in a crate without food or water in a back bedroom.

     Investigators immediately suspected that Jocelyn Earnest was murdered and the scene had been staged to look like a suicide. Detectives knew that people who kill themselves and leave notes rarely type them. In searching Jocelyn's two home computers investigators did not find drafts of this document. And the word choice and syntax of the note were inconsistent with the writing style found in the victim's handwritten journals. The police suspected that the furnace had been turned up to alter the body's decomposition rate to throw off the biological time of death determination. Apparently the killer wanted the police to believe Jocelyn had been killed earlier in the day, perhaps to support an alibi.

     Suspicion immediately fell on the victim's estranged husband Wesley Earnest who moved out of the house a year earlier. As an assistant high school principal he lived and worked 200 miles away in Chesapeake, Virginia. Jocelyn had been employed as a financial services manager in Lynchburg, Virginia. Although together they had been earning $200,000 a year they were deeply in debt. Wesley, over Jocelyn's objection, built a three million dollar, seven thousand square foot mansion on nearby lake property. The $6,000 a month mortgage on this second home they couldn't sell because it was financially under water put them $1 million in debt. On top of this Wesley Earnest found himself faced with the disastrous financial consequences of divorce.

     Wesley Earnest claimed he hadn't been to the Pine Bluff house for at least a year. After he moved out Jocelyn changed the locks. Investigators, however, could connect him to the crime scene in two ways: he purchased the .357 magnum and two of his latent fingerprints were on the typewritten note next to the body. Two days before his estranged wife's death the suspect borrowed a pickup truck from a friend. When he returned the vehicle two weeks later it had new tires. Detectives believed Wesley changed out the tires to avoid a crime scene tire track match-up.

     Investigators also read the victim's journal, handwritten in seventeen notebooks. Several of the entries, however, written from Jocelyn's point of view were in Wesley Earnest's hand. These forged additions portrayed the suspect in a favorable light. However, in one of the notebooks the victim had written: "If I die, Wesley killed me and he probably shot me."

     Wesley admitted to detectives that he had girlfriends but claimed that his wife knew about these affairs and approved of them. At his place of employment in Chesapeake, however, he told co-workers he was single.

     In May 2009 the $3 million house on the lake burned to the ground. Cause and origin fire investigators ruled the cause "undetermined." Because the place was heavily insured the fire accrued to Wesley's financial benefit.

     Wesley Earnest went on trial in March 2010 for the murder of his wife. His attorney, in an effort to uncouple the defendant from the typewritten crime scene note, contested the forensic reliability of latent fingerprint identification. (Perhaps the defendant would have better been served by offering an innocent explanation for the presence of his prints.) The defense attorney also put his client on the stand to testify on his own behalf. The defendant told the jurors that he purchased the .357 revolver as a gift for his wife so she could protect herself. He portrayed Jocelyn as having been distraught over their financial problems. He also said she was having trouble with the woman who was her new lover.

     The jury, a few days after listening to the defendant, after deliberating less than four hours, found him guilty of murdering his wife.

     A month following the conviction, before Mr. Earnest was sentenced, a posting on a newspaper web site revealed that the jurors had read Jocelyn's journal. The trial judge did not want the jury to see this evidence. The notebooks were inadvertently placed into a box that found its way into the jury room. In July 2010 the judge declared a mistrial.

     In November 2010, in Amherst, Virginia, Wesley Earnest went on trial again for the murder of his wife. His attorney, once again, put him on the stand to claim his innocence. On cross-examination the prosecutor got him to admit that in 2006 he forged entries into his wife's journal. When asked how he got into the Pine Bluff house he had been locked out of, he said he climbed through an unlocked window. In so doing the defendant revealed to the jury how he may have entered the house to murder his wife. The second jury found the defendant guilty of first-degree murder. He was subsequently sentenced to life in prison.

     In December 2012 a three-judge panel of the Virginia Court of Appeals upheld the murder conviction and life sentence for Wesley Earnest.

     No one saw Wesley Earnest enter the Pine Bluff house and shoot his wife. No one claimed he confided to them he committed the crime. And he never confessed to the police. All the prosecutor had was what looked like a staged suicide, a motive and a pair of latent prints on a suspect suicide note. But, with these two juries the prosecution had enough evidence to convict.