DISCLAIMER: The following unofficial case summaries are prepared by the clerk's office
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081780P.pdf 04/05/2011 United States v. Lisa Montgomery
U.S. Court of Appeals Case No: 08-1780
U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri - St. Joseph
[PUBLISHED] [Wollman, Author, with Murphy and Shepherd, Circuit Judges]
Criminal case - Criminal law. In case where defendant incapacitated a
pregnant woman so that she could extract the fetus and kidnap the baby,
and then strangled the woman so as to complete the extraction of the
fetus, defendant was properly charged under 18 U.S.C. Sec. 1201(a) with
kidnapping resulting in death; any evidence in excluding evidence that
defendant's Positron Emission Topography (PET) scan showed
abnormalities in the limbic and somatomotor regions of the brain was
harmless; the district court did not err in excluding opinion evidence that
defendant's PET scan was consistent with a diagnosis of pseudocyesis as
the opinion did not meet Rule 702's reliability requirement because it was,
at most, a working hypothesis and not admissible scientific knowledge; the
district court did not err in excluding MRI evidence as the results were
irrelevant to defendant's insanity defense and the mitigating factors she
pleaded; district court did not abuse its discretion by excluding polygraph
evidence under Rule 403; evidence was sufficient to support the statutory
aggravating factor of committing the offense in a specially heinous or
depraved manner; the district court did not err in submitting the statutory
aggravating factor and a rational trier of fact could have found the factor
existed beyond a reasonable doubt; claims of prosecutorial misconduct
rejected as the questions and comments at issue were either proper or did
not deprive defendant of a fair trial; penalty phase instructions were
proper based on this court's precedents interpreting the Federal Death
Penalty Act; cumulative effect of alleged errors did not deprive defendant
of a fair trial.