Confessed Murderer In Montana Asks High Court For Execution Delay

Rebuffed by the Montana Supreme Court, confessed murderer Terry Langford asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday to delay his execution scheduled for Tuesday.

Langford, sentenced to die by lethal injection for kidnapping and killing an Ovando couple in 1988, wants the execution postponed so the high court has more time to consider his appeal, which was filed last week.

In requesting the delay, Michael Donahoe, Langford’s court-appointed lawyer, repeated his arguments that the state illegally denied Langford a chance to escape the death penalty when it abolished hanging as a means of capital punishment last year.

After choosing hanging over lethal injection, Langford had argued that hanging was a cruel and unusual punishment forbidden by the Constitution. The Legislature unfairly took away that argument, Donahoe has told the Supreme Court.

Similar contentions by Langford have been rejected by the state Supreme Court, a federal judge and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

On Wednesday, Montana’s high court refused Langford’s request to delay the execution, clearing the way for the same petition to be filed with the federal court.

Donahoe, in seeking a stay, told the U.S. Supreme Court that an end to hanging is more than a procedural move that does not affect Langford’s rights.

“Once the state chooses what it believes to be a constitutionally valid approach to capital sentencing, it should stick to the script,” he said.

Had he been able to successfully argue that hanging is unconstitutional, Donahoe said, Langford’s chosen method of dying would be outlawed and the state would be powerless to execute him.

The federal court is expected to rule on the appeal by the end of the week.

Langford was sentenced to die in 1989 for abducting and murdering Ned and Celene Blackwood at their ranch house near Ovando in July 1988. He tied up the Blackwoods and shot each in the head before slashing Celene Blackwood’s throat.