
State & Federal
Montana
News & Developments
News
Mar 01, 2021
Legislators in South Carolina, Montana Seek to Change Execution Methods to Allow Executions to Resume

Frustrated by the inability to put prisoners to death, legislators in two states are seeking to jumpstart the execution process by changing the laws that govern how executions may be conducted. After gaining little traction in prior legislative sessions, a bill to make electrocution the default method of execution is moving forward in South Carolina, which is approaching ten years since its last execution. In Montana, after a court ruled in 2015 that the drugs in the state’s proposed execution protocol did not comply with Montana’s death penalty statute, legislators…
Read MoreDec 23, 2019
DPIC Analysis: Death Penalty Erosion Spreads Across the Western United States in 2019
In a year of declining death-penalty usage across the United States, nowhere was the erosion of capital punishment as sustained and pronounced in 2019 as it was in the western United States. Continuing a wave of momentum from Washington’s judicial abolition of capital punishment in October 2018, one state halted executions and dismantled its death chamber, another cleared its death row, two cut back on the circumstances in which the death penalty could be sought and imposed, and the entire region set record lows for new death sentences and executions.
Read MoreFeb 19, 2019
Death-Penalty Repeal Efforts Across U.S. Spurred by Growing Conservative Support
Bills to repeal and replace the death penalty with non-capital punishments have gained new traction across the United States in 2019 as a result of opposition to the death penalty among ideologically conservative legislators. That movement – buoyed by fiscal and pro-life conservatives, conservative law-reform advocates, and the deepening involvement of the Catholic Church in death-penalty abolition – has led to unprecedented successes in numerous houses of state legislatures and moved repeal efforts closer to fruition in a number of deeply Republican states. In 2019, conservative legislators are leading the…
Read MoreJul 26, 2018
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,…
Read MoreOct 09, 2015
Amid Unavailability of Lethal Injection Drugs, States Push Legal Limits to Carry Out Executions
“Over time lethal injection has become only more problematic and chaotic,” Deborah W. Denno, a professor at Fordham Law School, told the New York Times, summarizing the ongoing battles that have led states to adopt new drug sources or alternative methods of execution. Several states have obtained or sought drugs using sources that may violate pharmaceutical regulations. For the execution of Alfredo Prieto, Virginia obtained pentobarbital from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, which purchased it from a compounding pharmacy whose identity is shielded by the state’s secrecy law. “Even…
Read MoreOct 07, 2015
Montana Judge Puts Executions on Hold
On October 6, Montana District Court Judge Jeffrey Sherlock (pictured) held that the state’s proposed lethal injection protocol violated state law, which requires that an “ultra fast-acting barbiturate” be used in executions. Judge Sherlock said the proposed barbiturate, pentobarbital, does not qualify as such a drug.
Read MoreFeb 27, 2015
Recent Developments in Death Penalty Legislation
Several state legislatures have recently taken action on bills related to capital punishment. In Arkansas, a bill to abolish the death penalty passed the Senate Judiciary Committee on a voice vote. Bill sponsor Sen. David Burnett, a former prosecutor and judge who both sought and imposed the death penalty, said, “It’s no longer a deterrent. It’s a punishment that’s actually broken. It doesn’t work. And it costs a huge amount of money to try and prosecute those cases.” Arkansas last carried out an execution in 2005. A similar bill in…
Read MoreFeb 20, 2015
Death Penalty Repeal Bill Advances with Bi-Partisan Support in Montana
On February 18, the Montana House Judiciary Committee voted (11 – 10) to advance HB 370, a bill to replace the death penalty with a maximum sentence of life without parole. The same committee had rejected similar bills several times in recent years. The bill will now move to the full House. Republican bill sponsor Rep. David Moore (pictured) said he thought the bill had a decent chance of passing in the House. Rep. Clayton Fiscus, one of two Republican members of the Judiciary Committee who supported the bill, said, “Our death…
Read MoreFeb 07, 2013
EDITORIALS: Montana Paper Calls for Repeal
A recent editorial in the Great Falls Tribune in Montana outlined some of the key problems with the death penalty as the state legislature considers its repeal. The editors expressed concerns about the risks of mistake with executions: “There is no way to take back an execution. That reason alone provides good cause to eliminate the death penalty in Montana.” The paper also noted that victims’ families wait for decades for executions to be carried out, with the defendants receiving most of the attention: “[D]uring the long periods before their…
Read MoreFeb 04, 2013
Conservatives and Republicans Support Death Penalty Repeal Bill in Montana
A bipartisan group of legislators in Montana will introduce a bill to replace the state’s death penalty with a sentence of life without parole. The sponsors include two Republicans and two Democrats. A coalition of conservative lawmakers, religious groups, and human rights groups support the repeal of capital punishment. Republican Sen. Matthew Rosendale (pictured), a member of Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty, said his stance on the death penalty did not cost him votes. “People know where I stand on the death penalty and I still got elected by…
Read MoreOct 08, 2012
NEW VOICES: Former Supporters Rethinking the Death Penalty Because of its High Costs
According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, some long-time supporters of the death penalty have recently shifted their positions, questioning whether the occasional execution is worth the costs incurred by taxpayers at a time when budgets are strained. Gil Garcetti (pictured), the former district attorney of Los Angeles County, which is responsible for roughly one-third of California’s 727 death-row inmates, recently remarked, “I was a supporter and believer in the death penalty, but I’ve begun to see that this system doesn’t work and it isn’t functional. It…
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Notable Cases
The execution of Duncan McKenzie by lethal injection in 1995 was the first execution by a method other than hanging in Montana.
Notable Commutations/Clemencies
In 1988, David Cameron Keith was granted clemency by Gov. Ted Schwinden. Reasons reportedly included Keith’s partial paralysis and blindness, remorse, religious conversion, and the possibility that he may have shot the victim as a reflex action.
Milestones in Abolition/Reinstatement
Bills to abolish the death penalty passed the Montana Senate in 2009 and 2011, but were defeated in the state House Judiciary committee each time.
Other Interesting Facts
Hanging was the method of execution in Montana until 1995 (lethal gas was added in 1983 but never used), although the last hanging in Montana occurred in 1943. In 1995, Montana adopted lethal injection as the sole method of execution.
Montana was one of the last states to move executions from local authorities to centralized state administration.

