Montana’s death row population drops to just two inmates

Montana now has only two people left on death row, a stark marker of how the state’s capital punishment system has withered without a single execution in decades. The shrinking population reflects a mix of legal roadblocks, legislative stalemate, and shifting attitudes about whether the state will ever carry out another death sentence.

The numbers inside the death row unit tell a story about more than just prison logistics. They capture a long fight over lethal injection procedures, the politics of crime and punishment in a largely rural state, and the unresolved question of what justice should look like for the worst crimes in Montana.

What happened

Montana’s death row has contracted to just two inmates as a result of aging cases, successful appeals, and the absence of new death sentences. According to recent reporting on the state prison system, only Ronald Allen Smith and William Gollehon remain under active death sentences in Montana, both housed at the Montana State Prison in Deer Lodge. Their surviving cases illustrate how capital punishment in the state has effectively frozen in place, with no clear path to carrying out their sentences and no new defendants joining them.

Smith, a Canadian national, was convicted of the 1982 murders of Harvey Mad Man and Thomas Running Rabbit after he admitted to ambushing the two young men near East Glacier. He initially asked for the death penalty, then later reversed course and has spent decades challenging his sentence in state and federal courts. Gollehon was sentenced to death for his role in a violent 1990 prison riot at the Montana State Prison, where inmate Robert Harris was beaten to death during a chaotic uprising inside the maximum-security unit. Both men have been on death row for more than a generation, their cases outlasting multiple governors, attorneys general, and corrections directors.

The dwindling death row population is not the result of a formal policy to end capital punishment, since Montana law still allows death as a sentencing option for aggravated homicide. Instead, it reflects a long-running stalemate over how executions can legally be carried out. Montana’s statute requires that lethal injection use an “ultra-fast acting barbiturate” as part of the execution protocol. For years, the Department of Corrections relied on pentobarbital and then sodium pentothal, but shifting pharmaceutical policies and legal scrutiny made it harder to obtain those drugs and to prove they met the statutory standard.

The turning point came when a state district court judge blocked executions after concluding that the drug the Department of Corrections planned to use did not qualify as an ultra-fast acting barbiturate under the law. That ruling effectively halted the death penalty in practice, since the state could not legally proceed with an execution without either changing the drug protocol or amending the statute. Since then, no one on Montana’s death row has received an execution date, and prosecutors have largely stopped seeking death sentences in new homicide cases.

Earlier in the current legislative cycle, death penalty supporters attempted to break the impasse by rewriting the statute. A bill introduced in the Montana House of Representatives sought to broaden the law so that the Department of Corrections could use “any substance in a lethal quantity” for executions, rather than being limited to an ultra-fast acting barbiturate. The measure was framed as a technical fix that would allow executions to resume by bringing the statute in line with the drugs actually available to the prison system.

The effort fell short. The Montana House narrowly rejected the bill after an emotional debate that featured arguments about the reliability of lethal injection, the risk of executing innocent people, and the moral authority of the state to take a life. Opponents argued that expanding the range of permissible drugs would give too much discretion to corrections officials and could invite painful or botched executions. Supporters insisted that the change was necessary to carry out sentences already imposed by Montana juries and courts. The close vote left the statutory language intact and kept the practical moratorium in place, as documented in coverage of the House debate.

With no legislative fix, the Department of Corrections remains unable to schedule executions under current law. Smith and Gollehon continue to pursue appeals and post-conviction challenges, while their lawyers argue that the long delays and uncertainty surrounding Montana’s execution system raise constitutional questions of their own. At the same time, county prosecutors have steered clear of capital charges in recent homicide cases, citing the high cost of death penalty litigation and the near certainty of prolonged appeals even if a jury returns a death sentence.

Local reporting on the state’s death row unit has highlighted how this legal limbo has reshaped life inside the Montana State Prison. The unit once held several men under sentence of death, but over time some had their sentences reduced to life imprisonment, others died of natural causes, and no new inmates arrived to replace them. A recent overview of Montana death row underscored that the population has now dwindled to the two long-serving prisoners whose cases have defined the state’s capital punishment debate for decades.

Montana’s courts have also played a central role in constraining the death penalty. In addition to the lethal injection ruling, state and federal judges have scrutinized the adequacy of defense representation in capital cases, the handling of mitigating evidence, and the proportionality of sentences compared with similar crimes. Those rulings have contributed to the pattern of resentencings and reversals that helped shrink death row even before the execution protocol itself came under legal fire.

All of this has produced a capital punishment system that exists on paper but barely functions in reality. The statute remains in the Montana Code Annotated, and prosecutors technically retain the option to seek death in qualifying cases. In practice, however, the combination of judicial restrictions, drug availability problems, and legislative gridlock has turned death sentences into symbolic penalties that are almost never imposed and, so far, never carried out under the current protocol.

Why it matters

The reduction of Montana’s death row to two inmates is more than a statistical curiosity. It reflects deep questions about whether the state still has the political will, legal authority, and practical capacity to execute anyone, and it places Montana within a broader national pattern of states where capital punishment is increasingly rare in practice even when it remains on the books.

Historically, Montana has used the death penalty sparingly. A review of the state’s capital punishment history shows that executions have been infrequent since territorial days, with long gaps between them and only a handful of people put to death in the modern era. The last execution occurred in 1996, when the state executed Duncan McKenzie by lethal injection for the kidnapping and murder of Lana Harding. Before that, Montana had carried out only a small number of executions since the 1970s, and even fewer in the decades before that, according to a historical look at Montana’s death penalty.

That sparse record undercuts any claim that the death penalty is a routine part of Montana’s criminal justice system. Instead, capital punishment has functioned as an exceptional tool reserved for a tiny fraction of homicide cases. The fact that death row now holds only two men, both sentenced decades ago, reinforces the sense that the system is increasingly out of step with how prosecutors, juries, and judges respond to even the most serious crimes.

The legal stalemate over lethal injection also carries significant financial and institutional costs. Capital cases are among the most expensive prosecutions a state can undertake, often requiring multiple defense attorneys, expert witnesses, lengthy jury selection, and years of appeals. When those cases end in death sentences that the state cannot carry out because of procedural barriers, taxpayers shoulder the cost of a system that delivers neither finality for victims’ families nor the punishment that juries were told they were imposing. In Montana, where county budgets are limited and public defender resources are stretched, the prospect of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a death penalty case that may never reach an execution has made prosecutors more cautious about seeking capital charges.

For the families of victims in death penalty cases, the shrinking and stagnant death row population can cut both ways. Some relatives of homicide victims have supported efforts to keep capital punishment available, arguing that the severity of certain crimes demands the ultimate penalty and that the state should fix its execution protocol to carry out existing sentences. Others have expressed frustration with the long delays and repeated court hearings that accompany death penalty cases, and some have publicly supported replacing death sentences with life without parole to avoid reliving the crime each time a new legal challenge is heard.

The two men who remain on death row also raise difficult questions about fairness and consistency. Smith and Gollehon were sentenced under a legal regime that has since been heavily criticized and partially dismantled. If Montana is functionally unable to execute anyone now, their continued presence on death row can appear arbitrary, especially when other defendants convicted of similarly serious crimes received life sentences instead. Defense attorneys have argued that this disparity undermines the legitimacy of the death penalty and could support constitutional challenges based on evolving standards of decency and equal protection.

Nationally, Montana’s situation mirrors a wider trend in which capital punishment is concentrated in a shrinking number of states and counties. Several states that still authorize the death penalty have not carried out an execution in years, often because of drug procurement problems, legal challenges to lethal injection, or changing political priorities. Montana fits squarely into that group, with a statute that technically permits executions but a practical system that has not carried one out in three decades and now holds only two condemned inmates.

The legislative fight over the lethal injection statute also reveals shifting political dynamics. The close vote in the Montana House on the bill to expand the range of execution drugs suggests that lawmakers are divided not only on the death penalty itself but on how far the state should go to preserve it. Some legislators framed the bill as a necessary step to respect jury verdicts and uphold existing law. Others argued that the drug shortage and legal challenges were a signal that Montana should move away from executions rather than find new ways to carry them out.

The rejection of the bill left Montana in a position where the death penalty remains legal but largely unusable. That outcome has implications for separation of powers, since it effectively hands decisions about the future of capital punishment to the courts and the executive branch. Governors can decide whether to support or oppose further legislative changes, while attorneys general and corrections officials must navigate a legal environment where any attempt to restart executions is likely to trigger fresh litigation.

The shrinking death row also affects prison operations. Housing death-sentenced inmates requires specialized security protocols, staffing, and infrastructure, even when the number of prisoners is small. As the population declines, the per-inmate cost of maintaining those systems rises. Some corrections experts have argued that keeping a separate death row unit for just two prisoners is inefficient and that the state should consider integrating them into the general population with appropriate security measures if their sentences are converted to life without parole. Others counter that the symbolic and legal status of a death sentence justifies distinct housing conditions, regardless of cost.

Public opinion in Montana appears to be in flux. While there is still support for capital punishment in some parts of the state, especially in cases involving multiple murders or the killing of law enforcement officers, there is also growing skepticism about the death penalty’s effectiveness and fairness. Concerns about wrongful convictions, racial disparities, and the risk of botched executions have influenced debates across the country, and those themes have surfaced in Montana’s legislative and courtroom discussions as well. The fact that the state has gone so long without an execution, and now has only two people left on death row, may further shift perceptions by making capital punishment seem more like an outdated relic than a living policy.

For Smith and Gollehon, the practical impact of this broader debate is profound. Their legal teams continue to pursue appeals and clemency efforts, arguing that the combination of lengthy delays, changing legal standards, and practical obstacles to execution should weigh in favor of reducing their sentences. The longer Montana goes without resolving the status of its death penalty, the stronger those arguments may become. Courts have sometimes considered extreme delay as a factor in assessing whether a death sentence violates constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment, especially when the state bears responsibility for the delays.

The presence of only two inmates on death row also shapes how future policymakers think about reform. Ending the death penalty entirely through legislation would now affect a very small number of people, which could make abolition more politically palatable to some lawmakers who might have hesitated when death row was larger. At the same time, any move to commute existing sentences or formally repeal capital punishment would require confronting the specific crimes for which Smith and Gollehon were condemned, and the impact of those crimes on victims’ families and communities.

What to watch next

The future of Montana’s death penalty will likely be decided through a combination of legislative action, court rulings, and executive decisions. Several key developments bear close watching as the state navigates what to do with a death row that now holds only two men.

First, lawmakers will face continued pressure to revisit the lethal injection statute. Supporters of capital punishment are expected to renew efforts to modify the requirement that executions use an ultra-fast acting barbiturate, perhaps by proposing language similar to the bill that would have allowed “any substance in a lethal quantity.” If such a bill returns, the debate will again center on whether Montana should adapt its law to match the drugs available to corrections officials or interpret the current impasse as a signal to move away from executions altogether.