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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.