Montana Senate Rejects Bill to Revise Execution Protocol
On April 15, the Montana Senate voted down a bill that would have revised the state’s lethal injection protocol to enable a restart in executions.
House Bill 244 proposed replacing the mention of a specific execution drug with more general language in order to comply with a 2015 district court ruling which halted the use of that particular drug in lethal injections.
The bill, which was pushed by the state’s Republican attorney general, passed in the Montana House with a vote of 56-42. The Republican-controlled state Senate voted 24-26 against the bill, and several Republican Senators spoke against it on the floor.
The Montana Catholic Conference was active in opposing the legislation. Catholic Montanans took action with CMN to urge their Senators to vote ‘no’ on the bill.
