Month: October 2020

Lisa Montgomery to be the third Kansan put to death in a federal execution this year

Earlier this year, Wesley Ira Purkey and Keith Dwayne Nelson were put to death by the federal government.

by Dan Margolies, Kansas News Service

The scheduled execution of Lisa Montgomery, who was convicted in 2008 of killing a pregnant woman and cutting the baby from her womb, will mark the third time a Kansan has been put to death this year since the resumption of federal executions in July.

All told, 14 prisoners have been executed in the United States this year, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Seven have been carried out by the federal government and the remainder by five states, including Missouri’s execution of Walter Barton on May 19.

Wesley Ira Purkey of Lansing, Kansas, was executed by lethal injection on July 16 for abducting 16-year-old Jennifer Long in 1998 as she was walking home from East High School in Kansas City, Missouri, and then raping and murdering her. He was also convicted in Wyandotte County of bludgeoning to death 80-year-old Mary Ruth Bales of Kansas City, Kansas, with a claw hammer.

And Kansas resident Keith Dwayne Nelson was executed by lethal injection on Aug. 28 for abducting 10-year-old Pamela Butler in 1999 as she was rollerblading in front of her Kansas City, Kansas, home and then raping and murdering her. He dumped her body in a wooded area near a Missouri church in Grain Valley, Missouri.

The Justice Department announced Friday that it had set a Dec. 8 execution date for Montgomery. It will be the first federal execution of a woman since Bonnie Brown Heady was put to death in the Missouri gas chamber in 1953 for the kidnapping and murder of 6-year-old Bobby Greenlease Jr., the son of a wealthy Kansas City automobile dealer.

Since the federal death penalty was reinstated in 1988, only three federal executions had taken place before the Trump administration ordered the resumption of executions last year, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. One of them was of Timothy McVeigh, who was put to death for his role in the 1995 terrorist bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people.

Montgomery’s crime, because of its grisly nature, drew national headlines. In December 2004, she drove to the northwestern Missouri home of Bobbie Jo Stinnett, who was 23 years old and eight months pregnant, supposedly to buy a puppy from her. Instead, Montgomery strangled Stinnett to death and cut the baby from her abdomen. Montgomery, of Melvern, Kansas, who was 36 at the time, had told family and friends she was pregnant.

In a statement Sunday, Montgomery’s attorney, Kelley Henry, an assistant public defender in Tennessee, said Montgomery had endured trauma as a young child and was in the grip of mental illness when she committed the crime.

“Few human beings have lived through the kind of torture and trauma that was inflicted on Lisa Montgomery by her mentally ill, alcoholic mother,” Henry said. “From a young age, Lisa was sexually trafficked, told she had to ‘earn her keep,’ and repeatedly gang raped by adult men. The abuses Lisa endured exacerbated a genetic predisposition to mental illness inherited from both sides of her family. She suffers from complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and to this day must maintain a complex regimen of anti-psychotic medications to control her episodic psychosis.”

Montgomery is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana — the same facility where Purkey and Nelson were executed.

Dan Margolies is senior reporter and editor at KCUR. He can be reached by email at dan@kcur.org or on Twitter @DanMargolies.
The Kansas News Service is a collaboration of KCUR, Kansas Public Radio, KMUW and High Plains Public Radio focused on health, the social determinants of health and their connection to public policy, https://www.kcur.org/tags/kansas-news-service.
See more at https://www.kcur.org/news/2020-10-19/lisa-montgomery-will-be-the-third-kansan-put-to-death-in-a-federal-execution-this-year

Police notes

Armed burglary, assault reported on Washington Boulevard

An armed burglary and assault were reported at 10:04 p.m. Oct. 19 in the 900 block of Washington Boulevard, according to a social media post by the Kansas City, Kansas, Police Department.

The suspect was taken into custody and detained when officers arrived, according to the report.

The suspect forced entry into the victim’s apartment and battered an onsite security guard, the report stated.

State releases draft plan for distributing COVID-19 vaccines

Kansas has worked out a preliminary plan for distributing COVID-19 vaccines once they become available, according to a state health official.

The draft plan now is available on the state’s health department website, said Phil Griffin, director of disease control and prevention for the Kansas Department of Health and Environment. He discussed vaccines and the preliminary plan during a news conference Tuesday morning with the University of Kansas Health System.

The plan is currently under review with the Centers for Disease Control, and the plan will change as information becomes available, according to officials.

Griffin said they are working now to enroll providers for the vaccine, and will open a web portal next week.

Health officials are not sure exactly when COVID-19 vaccines will become available, but it was announced on Monday that one vaccine maker, Pfizer, would file for FDA authorization in mid-November. There had been speculation that the company would try to file this week or next week.

Griffin said several vaccines are in development right now. When one is approved, there will probably be a very limited amount of vaccine available immediately, he said. There are indications that production would be ramped up once the vaccines are approved.

Griffin said the draft plan calls for three phases of vaccinations in Kansas. This aspect of the plan is based on federal guidelines.

Medical professionals who are unable to work from home, who are in a hospital setting and are in contact with potential COVID-19 patients would be first to receive the vaccine in Phase 1A, Griffin said.

Phase 1B would include additional first responders, and would begin to serve high-risk populations, nursing home and long-term care staff and residents, he said.

This first phase would depend on the availability of vaccine and there would be an allocation process nationally, he said.

Phase 2’s first priority would be essential workers and those who are at risk, Griffin said.

Then, they hope to quickly go into Phase 3, full market availability for the general population, he said. They hope Phase 3 happens from the spring to the middle of next year, he added.

Providers will be enrolled, with the state first enrolling hospitals, then health departments, and after that working with partners and enrolling all types of providers, according to Griffin. On Friday, there was an announcement that the federal Health and Human Services Department has secured agreements with Walgreens and CVS as providers to long-term care facilities, he added.

If there are already relationships between long-term care facilities and other pharmacies or hospitals, they will enroll those as well, he said. They plan to use as wide a range of vaccinators as possible, he added.

By the time they get to Phase 3, they will be using a lot of private and local sources, including primary care physicians, he said.

If people are required to get two doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, they must make sure to get the same vaccine for the second dose, according to doctors.

When people get their first COVID-19 vaccine, they will receive a card noting their first dose, it will tell them when to come back for the second dose, and the card will list the vaccine they already received, according to Griffin. There is a registry for the vaccines, and providers must submit the name of the vaccine recipient with the vaccine received within a day, to be on file in the registry. The health officials hope to make sure that people get the correct second dose when they come in for their second vaccination.

Both Missouri and Kansas will be using the same platform for the registry, he said.

The state health department plans to use the same delivery system for the COVID-19 vaccine that it does for the flu vaccine, Griffin said.

There could be some challenges with some of the vaccines. For example, the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine needs to be kept very cold, about 70 degrees below zero, in shipping.

They are developing special shipping boxes for the vaccine that will keep it cold, he said. They also are developing procedures to make sure that it is not wasted.

Griffin said he plans to get a COVID-19 vaccine as soon as it is available to him. He will base his decision on which type of vaccine to take based on what the medical studies say, he added.

Because it is possible for people to get reinfected with COVID-19, there are still some questions about how long the vaccine will last, according to the doctors.

Currently they think immunity can last from a few to six months, possibly, for a person who gets COVID-19. That’s one of the reasons not to try to get COVID-19 on purpose, since getting it once won’t prevent people from getting it again, according to the doctors.

Vaccines are only one defense against the coronavirus, Dr. Steve Stites, chief medical officer at KU Health System, said. Other defenses that work include wearing a mask, washing hands, keeping distance and not going out when sick, he said.

On Tuesday morning, Dr. Dana Hawkinson, medical direction of infection prevention and control at the KU Health System, said there were 27 active COVID-19 inpatients at KU Health System, down five since Monday, with 11 in the intensive care unit and seven on ventilators. There were another 30 COVID-19 patients in the recovery phase, he said. Also, HaysMed in Hays, Kansas, reported 16 total COVID, 19 patients, with 15 active infections and one in the recovery phase, also a decrease.

The KU doctors’ news conference is at https://www.facebook.com/kuhospital/videos/2649422155323608/.

The state’s draft plan for vaccines is at https://www.coronavirus.kdheks.gov/DocumentCenter/View/1533/DRAFT-COVID-19-Vaccination-Plan-for-Kansas-Version11-10162020.