State & Federal
Montana
Timeline
1943 - Montana carries out the last execution by hanging.
1988 - David Cameron Keith is granted clemency by Montana Governor Ted Schwinden.
1995 - Montana adopts lethal injection as the sole method of execution. Duncan McKenzie is the first person to be executed by lethal injection instead of hanging in Montana.
2006 - Montana carries out the execution of David Thomas Dawson by lethal injection. Mr. Dawson is the last person to be executed in Montana.
2011 - The Montana state Senate passes a bill that would repeal the death penalty and replace it with a sentence of life without parole.
2012 - Montana District Court Judge Jeffrey Sherlock strikes down Montana’s three-drug lethal injection protocol as it differs from the two-drugg execution protocol spelled out in the law, which Judge Sherlock said would increase the likelihood of error and confusion in the process.
2015 - Montana District Court Judge Jeffrey Sherlock rules that the state of Montana is prohibited from using pentobarbital in its lethal injection protocol until the statute authorizing lethal injection is modified in conformance with this decision. As a result, executions in Montana will continue to be on hold indefinitely.
2021 - Montana legislators propose a measure to broaden the types of drugs that can be used in lethal injections. The legislation would amend the state’s execution law to remove the requirement that Montana must use an “ultra-fas-acting barbiturate.”
2023 - Montana Senate votes down a bill that aims to revise the state’s lethal injection procedure to secure a restart in executions.
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.
Pompeys Pillar National Monument. Photo by Montana Bureau of Land Management.
Resources
Montana Execution Totals Since 1976
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…
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Dec 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,…
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News
Feb 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…
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News
Jul 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…
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News
Oct 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…
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