01 February 2025 :
January 30, 2025 - MONTANA. Montana House narrowly rejects bill intended to allow death penalty to resume
The Montana House has narrowly voted down a bill that would have changed the laws on lethal injection and could have allowed the state to again carry out executions.
House Bill 205, sponsored by Rep. Shannon Maness, R-Dillon, fell two votes short on the House floor Thursday, 49-51.
Montana has been effectively unable to administer the death penalty since a 2015 court ruling. District Judge Jeffrey Sherlock, of Helena, ruled that pentobarbital – the drug the state was planning to use for lethal injections – did not qualify as “ultra-fast-acting,” a requirement under the current law. He blocked the state from using it “unless and until the statute authorizing lethal injection is modified in conformance with this decision.”
9 Republicans joined all 42 Democrats in voting against the bill, while the remaining 49 Republicans supported it.
This is the 3rd session in a row that the Legislature has considered bills to remove the “ultra-fast-acting” requirement. In 2021, the bill fell 2 votes short in the Senate, and in 2023, it failed by 1 vote on the Senate floor.
Montana currently has 2 prisoners sentenced to death: Ronald Smith, first sentenced in 1983, and William Gollehon, sentenced in 1992. The last time the state executed a prisoner was in 2006, when David Dawson was put to death at Montana State Prison.
