What happens when a federal inmate is scheduled to be executed in a few weeks, but her attorneys aren’t able to file her clemency petition because they contracted COVID-19 while going to visit her in prison?

That’s the question U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss of the District of Columbia will have to answer, after that exact scenario unfolded for Lisa Montgomery. Montgomery, who would be the first woman put to death by the federal government in decades, would also be the first woman executed under new death penalty protocols revealed by the Trump administration in 2019. DOJ announced Oct. 16 that Montgomery would be executed Dec. 8.