Just a week after Canadian killer Ronald Smith made a high-profile plea at his clemency hearing for Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer to spare him from the death penalty, Postmedia News has learned that Schweitzer will not be the state's governor if and when Smith is scheduled for execution.
Lawyers on both sides of the case — Smith's defence team as well as the state's assistant attorney general, who's leading the push for Smith's execution — now say there's no chance the Alberta-born double-murderer could be put to death until 2013, after Schweitzer's second and final term as governor ends on Dec. 31, 2012.
Montana's constitution imposes a two-term limit on the state's top political post, the holder of which has the exclusive authority to commute a death sentence.
Schweitzer, first elected governor in 2004, was in office for the 2006 execution of Montana inmate David Dawson, who had not requested clemency.
Schweitzer has remained non-committal in his public statements about whether he would consider commuting Smith's death sentence
The latest surprising twist in the Smith saga could mean a whole new round of legal battles — in a case that has already spent close to 30 years in the courts — over the implications of the coming change in governors for the Canadian's bid to avoid execution.
Source: Times Colonist, May 10, 2012
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