Montana hearing on HB205 spotlights constitutional, safety concerns over broad lethal-injection language

Representative Shannon Maness, sponsor of House Bill 205, opened a House Judiciary hearing saying the bill would "revise laws related to the death penalty" by changing statute language about lethal-injection drugs. "We're looking at House Bill 205, an act revising laws related to the death penalty," Representative Maness told the committee.

The bill would remove statutory language requiring an "ultra fast acting barbiturate" and replace it with a provision allowing the administration of "a substance or substances sufficient to cause death." Supporters who testified in the hearing said the change is intended to address a de facto moratorium on executions after a 2015 Montana court ruling that the state's prior protocol did not comply with statute; opponents said the rewrite is dangerously broad and likely to provoke constitutional challenges.

Why it matters: The change would remove a specific statutory description of drugs used in executions and give the Department of Corrections greater latitude to select drugs when executing a sentence. Opponents told the committee that broad language could permit methods or substances that violate the Eighth Amendment or Montana constitutional protections and that repeated litigation would be likely if the statute lacks guardrails.

In testimony opposing the bill, Alex Rate, deputy director and legal…