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Logline

The story of how unacceptable failings in our nation’s death penalty system allowed the life of one mentally ill death row inmate to be used as a prop to support Donald Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign, after she was failed by every loved one and institution charged with her protection.

Synopsis

In December, 2004 Lisa Montgomery killed Bobbi Jo Stinnett and cut her unborn child from her womb. Despite copious evidence of severe mental illness, and a childhood ripped straight from a Stephen King novel, during which she was beaten & raped weekly by her stepfather, a jury quickly sentenced her to death. Sixteen years later, a tense Donald Trump was eager to build news and excitement around his 2020 re-election campaign. His solution was to dust off a 17-year moratorium on federal executions, and find convicts he could kill to burnish his “law and order” bona fides. His compliant AG, William Barr was quick to accommodate, compiling a list of the condemned, a list that featured Lisa Montgomery. Despite a heartfelt and engaged clemency movement launched by Montgomery’s public defender, her fate was sealed in a terse, midnight order from “pro life” SCOTUS judge, Amy Coney Barrett. This is the story of how egregious and unacceptable failings in our nation’s death penalty system allowed the life of one mentally ill death row inmate to be used as a prop to support Donald Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign after she was failed by every loved one and institution that was charged with her protection.

Meet the Filmmakers

Nick Verbitsky — Filmmaker
Nick Verbitsky is an award-winning filmmaker who has been producing and directing documentaries focused on social, political and financial justice for two decades.

His films have garnered five (5) Emmy nominations (2 wins),as well as an Academy Award for Best Documentary, a DuPont-Columbia Silver Baton for Excellence in Journalism, as well as a Loeb Award.

Most of this work has been produced for FRONTLINE, public television’s premier investigative film series, starting with the Emmy-nominated, To Catch a Trader, a look at the federal government’s crackdown on insider trading at Wall Street hedge funds. Other films for FRONTLINE include the Emmy-winning Documenting Hate, which examined America’s neo-Nazi movement, The Pension Gamble, a look at the state of play of public pensions, as well as WEINSTEIN, The Healthcare Divide, Opioids, Inc., and the Emmy-winning/Oscar-nominated, Abacus: Small Enough to Jail.

He developed, A Catastrophic Accumulation of Damaging and Disturbing Life Events after seeing President Donald Trump’s arbitrary and cruel execution spree, launched to revive his moribund and ultimately unsuccessful 2020 re-election campaign.

“I immediately wondered, ‘why was Lisa Montgomery chosen to die (and for that matter, all of the others similarly situated)?’ What I found out about that process upset me greatly, and when I dug into Lisa’s life, my grief was compounded, exponentially.”

The film examines important issues in Lisa’s story, ranging from the Eight Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, SCOTUS jurisprudence, mental illness, and at its core, human dignity.

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Contact

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