HELENA — The Montana House has narrowly voted down a bill that would have changed the laws on lethal injection and could have allowed the state to again carry out executions.

House Bill 205, sponsored by Rep. Shannon Maness, R-Dillon, fell two votes short on the House floor Thursday, 49-51.

Montana has been effectively unable to administer the death penalty since a 2015 court ruling. District Judge Jeffrey Sherlock, of Helena, ruled that pentobarbital – the drug the state was planning to use for lethal injections – did not qualify as “ultra-fast-acting,” a requirement under the current law. He blocked the state from using it “unless and until the statute authorizing lethal injection is modified in conformance with this decision.”

State leaders have said they’ve been unable to get drugs that meet the current requirement. HB 205 would have removed the “ultra-fast-acting” language and instead allowed the state to use “an intravenous injection of a substance or substances in a lethal quantity sufficient to cause death.”

While the bill deals with the technical requirements for the death penalty, not the policy itself, lawmakers acknowledged during their debate that the vote would determine whether executions resume.

“We've had a longstanding policy that we wanted this option to be available; the current system doesn't allow it because of the language,” said Rep. Bill Mercer, R-Billings. “That's what the sponsor is trying to do, and I think that's an important thing to clarify.”

Rep. Zack Wirth, R-Wolf Creek, said he couldn’t support the bill because he considered himself “a supporter of all pro-life issues.”

“When we perpetuate something like this, a death penalty – as repugnant as the crimes can be, I still cannot support the death penalty,” he said.

Nine Republicans joined all 42 Democrats in voting against the bill, while the remaining 49 Republicans supported it.

This is the third session in a row that the Legislature has considered bills to remove the “ultra-fast-acting” requirement. In 2021, the bill fell two votes short in the Senate, and in 2023, it failed by one vote on the Senate floor.

Montana currently has two prisoners sentenced to death: Ronald Smith, first sentenced in 1983, and William Gollehon, sentenced in 1992. The last time the state executed a prisoner was in 2006, when David Dawson was put to death at Montana State Prison.