By Katie McKeown, Organizer
Montana Catholic Conference

Two inmates currently await the death penalty in Montana, and our state has only executed three individuals since 1976, the year executions resumed after a nationwide moratorium. Why, then, should we pay attention to our state’s very minimal use of the death penalty? Three reasons.

First, Montana is in a unique position to answer the late Pope John Paul II’s call to abolish the death penalty, which he called “both cruel and unnecessary.”1 In 2007, Montana became only the second state to pass a death penalty abolition bill through one house of the legislature. The bill passed Montana’s Senate and was held up in House committee by one vote. A further motion to “blast” the bill to the House floor was narrowly defeated.

Nationwide, death penalty opponents are looking to our state to become only the second in recent history to legislatively abolish the death penalty.

Second, despite the fact that Montana has sentenced few people to death, we expend a tremendous amount of resources on the capital punishment process. A comparison of two recent cases illustrates this point. In Gallatin County, a prosecutor decided to pursue the death penalty against two young men. The state then spent approximately $700,000 preparing for a capital trial that never happened; one man pled guilty and received a life sentence with a chance of parole after 30 years and the other man had the murder charges dropped as part of a plea bargain.

In Lewis and Clark County, a prosecutor decided not to pursue the death penalty against two young men, whose trials and sentencing were concluded for less than 10 percent (under $70,000) of the cost of the capital case. Both young men received life sentences, with a chance of parole only after 55 years – stricter sentences than those received in the Gallatin County case. The state spent over $600,000 more on a case that failed to deliver a death sentence, lasted longer and resulted in more lenient sentences. Most of us can think of better ways to spend that sum of money, such as counseling for victims’ families, community prevention programs, increased funding for law enforcement, etc.

The third and most important reason to pay attention to this issue is that capital punishment violates the sanctity of human life. As Catholics, we believe all human life is sacred, from conception to natural death. We are the stewards, not the authors of life, and our quest must be to always enhance, and never to threaten, human life and dignity.

Sister Helen Prejean suggests that capital punishment is not about who deserves to die for their crimes, but who deserves to kill the perpetrators. When we look at the death certificate of those who have undergone capital punishment, we see that the cause of death is listed as “homicide.” Montanans need to stand up and declare once and for all that we will never again condone killing in our names.

Contact katiemcc@bresnan.net or call 442-5761 to learn more about the abolition movement and how you can help end the death penalty in Montana.

1 Homily, Papal Mass, St. Louis, Missouri, January 27, 1999.


Published in The Montana Catholic Online, Volume 24, No. 10, October 17, 2008.