EDITORIAL: The ironic persistence of Ron Smith

Pardon our dismay.

Once again, the good people of Montana have been forced to watch the spectacle of lawyers jumping through hoops in order to try to save the life of a man who gave up his right to that life 33 years ago when he murdered two men because he wanted to know what it felt like to kill someone.

Ronald Allen Smith pleaded guilty in 1983 to executing Harvey Mad Man Jr. and Thomas Running Rabbit Jr. near Marias Pass in Flathead County after the Browning cousins picked him up hitchhiking. He said at first that he wanted to die for his crime, but then changed his mind, and for the last three decades, Montanans have watched him squirm out of one execution date after another.

Last week, he was at it again. Smith’s attorneys have gone to court in Helena to argue that lethal injection using pentobarbital is cruel and unusual punishment because the sedative may not be “ultra-fast acting.”

The irony of this argument would be delicious were is not so nauseating. Here we have a man who shot two men with a sawed-off rifle in the back of the head arguing that he thinks it would not be humane to sedate him slowly in preparation for his death. If he really wants to go quicker, we are sure that the citizens of Montana would happily volunteer a number of methods of execution that would be fast-acting.

But honestly, we all know that’s not the issue. What Smith and his lawyers are after is a chance to find a judge who will rule that the death penalty is unconstitutional. Just as other traditional values have been struck down by activist courts, so too the notion of compelling the ultimate penalty for particularly heinous crimes is in the sights of the progressive left. They haven’t been able to convince the Legislature to do away with the death penalty, so that leaves an activist judge as their best hope.

The other irony, and one we have repeatedly noted in the past 20 years, is that prolonging Ron Smith’s life year after year has amounted to cruel and unusual punishment not of Smith, but of his victims’ friends and family. It is the legal system itself that should be on trial, not the method of execution. Keeping Ron Smith alive is an affront to justice itself.

As we noted in 2002, “Smith originally asked for the death penalty. We still hope he gets his wish.”