Days after hearing testimony from clergy, young conservative lawmakers, and an exonerated death-row inmate from Arizona asking for the end of capital punishment, state lawmakers voted against their request.
Shortly before the House Judiciary committee voted, Representative Lola Sheldon-Galloway, a Republican from Great Falls, passed out a picture of her sister-in law and asked the lawmakers on the committee to imagine something — a daughter, being murdered, beaten with a pop bottle and stabbed in the throat, eventually running out of blood. Then she gets tossed in the trunk of a car.
Lola Sheldon-Galloway says the bill, which would replace the death penalty with life without parole, was too weak in its language. She says some people, convicted of heinous crimes, shouldn’t be able to leave a prison alive.
"There is a better option, than this particular legislation," Sheldon-Galloway says. "And I will definitely vote no on it, for that reason."
When
the bill was introduced earlier this week, no-one testified against it. Before the vote, Representative Shane Morigeau, a Democrat from Missoula, asked lawmakers to consider the mistakes that can be made in the death penalty system.
"We are not perfect in our sentencing," Morigeau says. "We make mistakes all the time. And I think sentencing one person to death and making a mistake one time, is one time too many."
The bill to abolish capital punishment failed ten votes to nine.
Attempts to remove the death penalty from Montana’s books have failed in every legislative session this century.
There are currently two men sitting on death row.
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