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Thread: Montana Capital Punishment News

  1. #31
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    TOTAL SHOCKER READERS WONT BELIEVE WHAT HAPPENS NEXT

    Panel tables bill to abolish Montana's death penalty

    HELENA — A legislative committee has tabled a bill that would abolish Montana's death penalty.

    The House Judiciary Committee voted 10-9 Friday against advancing the measure to the full House. The bill could be revived, but it is likely dead for the legislative session.

    Bills to abolish the state's death penalty have failed in every legislative session since 1999, which is as far back as the Legislature's online bill-tracking archive goes.

    http://missoulian.com/news/state-and...5fc9abf69.html
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

  2. #32
    Senior Member CnCP Legend CharlesMartel's Avatar
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    Montana Judge Sanctions State in Execution Drug Case

    Montana Department of Justice spokesman says agency would immediately turn over the documents

    BY MATTHEW BROWN
    THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

    BILLINGS — A judge has sanctioned the state of Montana over its yearlong delay in complying with a court demand to turn over documents that could reveal if there was manipulation of an expert witness in a case that halted lethal injections.

    Montana Department of Justice spokesman Eric Sell said Tuesday that the agency would immediately turn over the documents under the order from Judge James Reynolds.

    The documents will be given to attorneys for the plaintiffs in the case — Ronald Smith and William Gollehon, Montana’s only two death row inmates.

    The American Civil Liberties Union of Montana, which is representing Smith, has questioned whether the testimony of expert witness Roswell Evans was manipulated at trial to bolster the state’s unsuccessful claim that the drug pentobarbital was suitable for use in executions.

    Sell says there was no manipulation by the state.

    Smith and Gollehon sued Montana in 2008, challenging the constitutionality of its lethal injection statute. The suit focused on the state’s plans to use pentobarbital in lethal injections after the Department of Corrections was no longer able to obtain sodium pentothal, the original barbiturate used in the state’s two-drug execution protocol.

    Evans had testified in 2015 that the drug pentobarbital met a state law requirement that an “ultra-fast-acting barbiturate” be used in lethal injections. But he also testified in a separate case in Tennessee that the drug was not classified as ultra-fast acting.

    After rejecting Evan’s testimony in the Montana case, District Judge Jeffrey Sherlock ruled pentobarbital did not comport with state law, which effectively blocked executions in the state.

    The state later investigated the testimony and told the ACLU that it had terminated its dealings with Evans, but it did not turn over the documents associated with the investigation.

    ACLU legal director Alex Rate said the organization would be reviewing the documents to determine if further sanctions or other actions are warranted.

    Reynolds also ordered the state to cover some of the plaintiffs’ attorney fees as punishment for not turning over the documents more quickly.

    The documents were originally ordered released on Dec. 12, 2016, but the state sought a protective order that would prevent the plaintiffs from further disseminating the information.

    Reynold rejected the request for the protective order and said in a Dec. 12 ruling that the state’s arguments for delay were “not well-founded” and were deserving of sanctions.

    http://flatheadbeacon.com/2017/12/19...ion-drug-case/

  3. #33
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Montana Lawmakers Asked to Revise, Abolish Death Penalty

    HELENA — A Montana lawmaker wants to require prosecutors to provide indisputable biological proof that a person committed a capital crime before that person can be sentenced to death.

    The House Judiciary Committee is set to hear a bill Wednesday by Rep. Brad Hamlett, D-Cascade, that would require there be DNA or other biological proof that a judge finds conclusively establishes the defendant’s guilt before they can be sentenced to death.

    The measure would save the state money because fewer people would be sentenced to death, creating fewer appeals and reducing court costs, Hamlett said.

    “Whether you agree with the death penalty or not, I think we can all agree we don’t want innocent people being executed, period,” Hamlett said Tuesday.

    Montana is one of 30 states with the death penalty, but it can’t execute anybody because of a judge’s ruling that the Department of Corrections doesn’t have access to the specific lethal injection drugs that are allowed under state law. The most recent execution in Montana was in 2006.

    Republican Rep. Mike Hopkins of Missoula is sponsoring a separate bill seeking to abolish the death penalty entirely — including the sentences of the two men on death row. Hopkins’ bill also has been assigned to the House Judiciary Committee, although a hearing date has not been set.

    State lawmakers have rejected efforts to repeal the death penalty for at least the past two decades. Hopkins said the time is now.

    “If you’re a person that just generally believes the death penalty is wrong, then the death penalty is wrong and it should be abolished,” Hopkins said. “If you’re a person that believes in fiscal responsibility or the concept that policy should actually do what the policy says, then the death penalty should be abolished because we have a death penalty under which nobody dies.”

    William J. Gollehon faces the death penalty for killing a fellow inmate during a 1990 riot at the state prison. He was already been serving a life sentence for killing a woman in Billings in 1985.

    Ronald Allen Smith was sentenced to death in March 1983 for killing two hitchhikers in August 1982.

    The state has had to pay for special attorneys to defend Gollehon and Smith and file appeals on their behalf as well as defended lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the penalty and the protocol used to carry it out, Hopkins argued.

    Montana’s neighbor to the south, Wyoming, also is considering abolishing the death penalty. A repeal bill passed the state House last week and is now pending in the Senate.

    Last year, Washington state’s supreme court ruled the death penalty there is unconstitutional, and Delaware’s high court did the same in 2016. Nebraska lawmakers repealed the death penalty in 2015, but it was reinstated by voters the following year.

    New Mexico, Illinois, Connecticut and Maryland have all repealed the death penalty in their states over the last decade, while governors in Oregon, Colorado and Pennsylvania have declared moratoriums in their states.

    https://flatheadbeacon.com/2019/02/0...death-penalty/
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  4. #34
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Montana lawmakers hear bill abolishing death penalty

    A bill to abolish the death penalty in Montana got its 1st hearing Monday.

    House Bill 350, sponsored by Rep. Mike Hopkins, R-Missoula, seeks to replace Montana’s death penalty with life in prison without the possibility of parole.

    At the hearing, Hopkins said a court order out of Lewis and Clark County barred Montana from executing inmates on death row, citing the barbiturate the state used was not fast acting. Because of that, Hopkins said, inmates on death row cost the state more money to keep them there.

    “It is another form of life in prison that just so happens to cost the state of Montana a lot more money than regular life in prison without the possibility of parole,” Hopkins said.

    There are two inmates on death row at the Montana State Prison, according to the bill’s fiscal note. The last execution in the state happened in 2006, and was estimated to cost the state $49,500.

    The committee did not take immediate action on the bill.

    Supporters of the bill included human rights advocates, religious groups and the public defender’s office. They argued the death penalty was unjust and fiscally irresponsible.

    Peter Ohman, lobbyist for the Office of the Public Defender, said he supported the bill for two reasons: money and resources.

    Ohman said finding attorneys to represent people accused of a crime that could carry the death penalty is difficult, especially in rural parts of the state. He said 2 cases the office is working on now cost the state more than $1 million over a biennium.

    “Removal of the death penalty would save our office quite a bit of money,” Ohman said.

    SK Rossi, lobbyist for American Civil Liberties Union of Montana, said the death penalty is a “monstrous version of government overreach in theory, and is unreliable and unfair in practice.” Rossi said a person’s chance of being executed increases if they’re not white, not wealthy or not mentally sound.

    “The only way to guarantee a fair system that does not put innocent people to death is to abolish capital punishment completely,” Rossi said.

    (source: The Fairfield Sun Times)
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  5. #35
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Montana Lawmakers Asked for More Latitude in Execution Drugs

    Supporters of the bill included county attorneys and the Montana Police Protective Association

    Montana’s attorney general asked lawmakers Wednesday to support a bill that would give the state more latitude in selecting drugs to be used to carry out lethal injections after a judge blocked the state’s proposed protocol and as companies restrict access to drugs used to carry out capital punishment.

    The bill, carried by Rep. Dennis Lenz, R-Billings, follows a 2015 court order in which District Judge Jeffrey Sherlock said Montana’s plan to use pentobarbital to render an inmate unconscious did not meet state law requiring the use of an ultra-fast-acting barbiturate because there was a drug that acted more quickly.

    “Whether those are currently available is not an issue the court can resolve for the state,” Sherlock said in reference to the faster-acting drug, sodium pentothal.

    “The companies that make ultra fast-acting barbiturates figured out that states were using it to inflict the death penalty and as a matter of corporate protest, I guess you would say, they stopped making it and they stopped importing those drugs,” Attorney General Austin Knudsen said.

    Sherlock’s ruling said if the Legislature intended to give the state latitude to choose different drugs, it could have used much more general language in the law. The current law requires the use of an ultra-fast-acting barbiturate in combination with a chemical paralytic agent.

    Lenz’s bill would change the law to say the death penalty could be carried out through “an intravenous injection of a substance or substances in a lethal quantity sufficient to cause death.”

    The language matches laws in Texas and Florida that have sustained legal challenge, said Knudsen, who requested the bill.

    Supporters of the bill included county attorneys and the Montana Police Protective Association.

    “If we’re going to have the law on the books, ladies and gentlemen, the state needs to be able to carry it out,” said Gallatin County Attorney Marty Lambert.

    Opponents argued the proposed change would grant too many options in choosing substances that can cause death.

    At least some companies restrict the use of pentobarbital, the drug the federal government used to carry 13 executions from July 2020 through January.

    “I simply offer that such a scramble for new modes of killing will not make our state more just, it will not make us safer and in fact will result in a legal battle that costs our state and our taxpayers more money than we ought to impose on them,” said Sam Forstag with the ACLU of Montana.

    The committee did not vote on the bill.

    House Judiciary Chair Barry Usher, R-Billings, reminded people before the hearing that the bill was not about the death penalty, but about changing the law with regard to how it would be carried out. He disallowed testimony that sought to argue against the death penalty itself.

    Another committee member, Rep. Ed Stafman, D-Bozeman, has a bill that would abolish the death penalty that Usher said would be before the committee soon. Similar bills have been presented to the Montana Legislature in each session dating back to at least 1999. The 2015 bill passed the Senate but failed on a tie vote in the House.

    Montana has 2 men facing the death penalty, William Jay Gollehon and Ronald Allen Smith. The state last carried out an execution in 2006.

    (source: flatheadbeacon.com)
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  6. #36
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    Bill to reinstate executions in Montana passes House vote

    By Missoula Current

    Montana is on track to resume capital punishment for the first time since 2015 after lawmakers in the House gave preliminary approval to legislation loosening requirements for lethal injections in the state.

    The House passed HB244 on second reading 56-44, the penultimate hurdle before the bill moves to the Senate.

    The proposal, carried by Rep. Dennis Lenz, R-Billings, would strike language in state law requiring that the chemical cocktail used in lethal injections contain an “ultra fast acting barbiturate,” a move opponents warn would allow unregulated substances to be used in executions by the state.

    The bill replaces that language with a requirement that the state use a substance “sufficient to cause death.”

    Executions in Montana have been on hold since 2015, when Lewis and Clark County Judge Jeffrey Sherlock ruled that the barbiturate the state had been using, pentobarbital, did not comply with statute, as it took minutes to kill — hence, not “ultra fast acting.” The state’s last execution was in 2006, the third since the practice was reinstated in 1976.

    Lenz said he took that ruling as a prerogative to change statute in order to comply with the court’s decision, allowing capital punishment in Montana to continue. The legal structure for the death penalty in Montana is already in place, he said; this bill merely clears up “technical issues” that have prevented the practice for the last five years.

    Republicans have sought to prevent debate on the bill from becoming a broader referendum on the death penalty.

    “We haven’t been able to use Montana’s death penalty that we have in law because of this little thing,” said Rep. Derek Skees, R-Kalispell, in debate on the bill Tuesday. “That’s the real reason the Democrats are against it, is because when we fix it, the death penalty comes back on in Montana.”

    But explaining the bill as a change needed to bring statute into compliance with a court order belies the ramifications of removing the “ultra fast acting” requirement, opponents say.

    That language is in statute because “it was thought at the time that that was the most humane way to kill someone,” said Rep. Ed Stafman, D-Bozeman. “This bill would eliminate that language, and replace it with any lethal substance or substances. No limitations, it could be an experimental drug, it could be a particularly cruel or painful drug. It doesn’t have to be approved by the (U.S. Food and Drug Administration) or a doctor. Anything goes.”

    Lenz has pushed back on that suggestion, arguing during the bill’s committee hearing earlier in February that he didn’t think “anyone at the prison is going to be grabbing a jug of anti-freeze and killing somebody with it.”

    The Department of Corrections’ written protocol for lethal injections — protocol that, as Stafman pointed out, isn’t law and is subject to change — stipulates that pentobarbital can be replaced with sodium penothal if the former is unavailable. If neither are available, “an appropriate drug will be determined and used as a replacement,” the protocol states.

    “Prison officials decide on the drug, decide on the dosage, insert the needles, there are no limitations,” Stafman said.

    Other objections to the bill relate to the cost to the state of resuming lethal injections. A fiscal note from the governor’s budget analysts estimated that each execution could cost the state around $100,000. This isn’t including the potential costs stemming from litigation against the state, which budget analysts say could exceed $400,000.

    “In sum, this bill makes the death penalty process crueler, longer, and will inevitably lead to another years-long legal battle,” Stafman said. “This is not a technical issue. Torture is not a technical issue.”

    https://missoulacurrent.com/governme...death-penalty/

  7. #37
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    If this reaches the desk of the governor and Montana gets the drugs, can we really expect an execution in Montana this year? Their 2 death row inmates would be ready for a warrant.

  8. #38
    Administrator Aaron's Avatar
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    The whole delay is ridiculous. Charles Rhines in South Dakota tried the same argument about pentobarbital and "ultra fast-acting." The courts rejected it and he was executed as planned in 2019.
    Don't ask questions, just consume product and then get excited for next products.

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  9. #39
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Neil's Avatar
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    I’ve got to say I’m impressed the bill made it this far during the session. It’s all dependent upon how serious Gianforte is on bringing back executions to Montana.

    He wasn’t a big supporter of it in his debate with Bullock back in 2016. More lukewarm than anything. However, he still supported it so we’ll see once it reaches his desk on how he handles this.

    If Montana does execute those two. Then that’s all this bill will be good for. When was the last time this state even had a death sentence? The 90s? Jurors haven’t be serious on the DP there since the 90s. At least other small jurisdictions like Kansas, Nebraska, Idaho and South Dakota sentenced people to the in the last two decades. Montana has not. So in retrospect this will be a repeat of what Virginia did in 2016 the conservatives in their legislature forced Mcaullife to execute their remaining death row population. Montana will be doing the same here.
    Last edited by Neil; 02-17-2021 at 01:07 PM.

  10. #40
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    Quote Originally Posted by Neil View Post
    If Montana does execute those two. Then that’s all this bill will be good for.
    I think this would be enough. Smith has been on death row for 37 years and Gollehon for almost 29 years. It’s time for justice!

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