"Convicted murderer to plead for life at clemency hearing," is the Great Falls Tribune staff report.
Tomorrow morning convicted murderer Ronald Smith will walk into the Powell County Court House in Deer Lodge and plead for his life.
Almost 30 years earlier, Smith ignored the pleas of his two victims. He and another Canadian hitchhiker forced two young Blackfeet men into the woods near Marias Pass and shot them both in the head. It was a chilling crime — one Smith has never denied responsibility for.
During a hearing in 1983, Smith told the court that he killed Thomas Running Rabbit and Harvey Mad Man because he wanted to steal their car and because he wanted to know, "what it would feel like to kill someone." Then, in a surprise move that caught both state prosecutors and his own attorney off guard, Smith rejected an already negotiated plea agreement and requested the death penalty. At a sentencing hearing in March 1983, the court granted his request.
A few weeks later, Smith changed his mind. Since then, he and his attorneys have appealed his sentence seven times, variously arguing that Montana's method of execution is unconstitutional, that he received ineffective legal council and that a variety of mitigating circumstances warrant the commutation of his sentence. He has now exhausted that appeals process.
On Wednesday, Smith is scheduled to appear before the Montana Board of Pardons and Parole one last time. The parole board does not have the authority to commute Smith's sentence, but Smith will ask the three-member panel to recommend to the governor that his death sentence be commuted to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Only the governor can grant such clemency.
The CBC News reports, "Canadian on death row in U.S. hoping for clemency."
The only Canadian facing the death penalty in the United States hopes to persuade the people who will decide his fate he's not the same man he was 30 years ago.
Ron Smith, 54, has been on death row in a Montana prison since 1982 after he and an accomplice were convicted of killing two men in Montana.
Beginning Wednesday, he'll ask for clemency at a two-day hearing before the state's Board of Pardons and Parole.
"The person that committed those crimes isn't sitting here," the Red Deer, Alta., native told CBC's Mark Kelley in an interview to be aired on CBC News Network Tuesday night. "And again, I'm not trying to downplay the crime.
"I had a moment where emotions and anger got the best of me and I committed a horrible crime. That doesn't define me. If you want to define me, then take a look at the 30 years," he said.
"Canadian on death row to plead for his life," by the Canadian Press is via CP24.
His is the final name on the list of 16 witnesses put forward by his attorneys for the two-day clemency hearing before the Montana Board of Pardons and Parole beginning Wednesday in Deer Lodge, Mont.
The hearing is being held near the federal penitentiary where Smith, originally from Red Deer, Alta., has spent the last three decades locked up.
"I've always wanted an opportunity to step outside of all of this and to be able to apologize to the family and explain to them just everything about me at that point in time. I was a completely different person," Smith said in an interview last month with The Canadian Press. "It's who I am, who I've become and what I've got going into the future."
The decision to speak at the hearing before the three-member panel was entirely up to Smith, said Don Vernay, co-counsel for Smith who works out of Albuquerque, N.M.
"What we want to do is wait until everything is done and then have the last word," he said. "He's got to speak to the board. These are the people who are going to decide if he lives or dies. He's going to express his remorse and his desire to live."
A flood of support has been flowing into the office of the Board of Pardons and Parole asking it to spare Smith's life.
"Our office has received and continues to receive a colossal amount of support for the commutation from around the world based on individuals' moral beliefs against the death penalty rather than a personal investment or opinion with this particular case," writes a board staffer in a leaked report obtained by The Canadian Press last month.
"Executing Ronald Smith is simply not moral," is Naomi Lakritz' column for the Calgary Herald.
When the Montana parole board meets Wednesday to discuss the fate of death-row inmate Ronald Smith, it will consider his conduct in prison, his remorse for his crime, the feelings of his family, and the feelings of the families of the two men he murdered almost 30 years ago.
But one thing I'm willing to bet the board won't discuss is the only thing that matters — whether executing Smith for the killings of Thomas Running Rabbit and Harvey Mad Man is in itself, a moral thing to do. The answer, clearly, is no. Killing is not moral.
To say that killing Smith is immoral is not to deny or minimize the anguish that the two victims' families continue to suffer. Rather, it means that when meting out punishment, the justice system should never stoop to the level of the criminals who come before it, for then it is just as guilty as they are and has just as much blood on its hands as they do.
I don't know how Smith can live with himself after what he did, but I also don't know how members of the parole board can live with themselves if the board recommends to Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer that Smith should die. Is the U.S. a civilized society, or not? I would have to say that when a state governor holds the power of life or death in his hands, the answer is a loud "not." How does that work?
Earlier coverage of Ronald Smith's case begins at the link. Related posts are in the clemency and foreign citizen indexes.
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