Montana Prosecutors Drop Death Penalty Against Mentally Ill Defendant

Lloyd Barrus (pictured, left) will not become the first person sentenced to death in Montana this century, after prosecutors dropped their pursuit of the death penalty for the killing of a sheriff’s deputy. In a motion filed July 19, 2018, Broadwater County Attorney Cory Swanson (pictured, right) wrote that, “after extensive analysis of the Defendant’s history of … mental illness,” the state would no longer seek the death penalty in the case. Doctors at the Montana State Hospital had diagnosed Barrus with multiple mental health disorders, including a delusional disorder, that led Judge Kathy Seeley to find him incompetent to stand trial and to commit him to a mental hospital for treatment. Medical records documented Barrus’s history of mental health issues dating to 2000, and Swanson did not contest the diagnoses. The prosecution’s notice to withdraw the death penalty acknowledged that Barrus’s mental illness was potentially a “sufficiently mitigating circumstance” for the court to choose a life sentence over the death penalty. Swanson said he believes the mental health treatment plan ordered by the court will restore Barrus’s competency to be tried, that he “expects to try this case before a jury, and believes the court will have the opportunity to hold the Defendant accountable through a just sentence, which includes up to imprisonment for life without the possibility of parole.” With the death penalty off the table, Montana will continue its 21-year streak without a death sentence. The last time the state sentenced a defendant to death was 1996. Just two people remain on Montana’s death row, and the state’s last execution was in 2006. Several states have considered bills in recent years that would exempt people with severe mental illness from the death penalty, but no state has imposed such a ban.