Tag: montana

Ronald Allen Smith Montana Death Row

ronald allen smith montana death row

Ronald Allen Smith was sentenced to death by the State of Montana for a double murder. According to court documents Ronald Allen Smith and an accomplice would murder two Native American men after they were picked up hitchhiking. Ronald Allen Smith who was born in Canada would ask for the death penalty after pleading guilty to the double murder.

Montana Death Row Inmate List

Ronald Allen Smith 2021 Information

Ronald Allen Smith More News

Ronald Allen Smith‘s father still had a bedroom and a vintage car waiting for the day his son might come home to Alberta from the Montana prison where he has been on death row for 35 years.

Nelson Smith will never know if the 60-year-old convict who pleaded guilty to two murders will ever sleep in his own bed or take the mint 1948 Chrysler out for a spin.

Smith died on April 10 just weeks after breaking a decades-long silence and voicing what would be his final wish — to see his son beat the death penalty.

“Hopefully what little bit I do have to say will go along with his someday being released. He’s spent 35 years of his life in there and it’s about long enough to sit in a place like that,” Smith said in a March 22 interview with The Canadian Press in Red Deer, Alta.

Ronald Allen Smith has been on death row since 1983 after fatally shooting two young men while he was high on LSD and alcohol near East Glacier, Mont.

After refusing a plea deal and pleading guilty, his request for the death penalty was granted. He had a change of heart and has fought for his life ever since. Five execution dates have been set over the years and each has been overturned.

The Canadian government sent a letter to Montana Gov. Steve Bullock in 2016 asking for clemency.

“All these years I’ve never, ever told anybody about this situation. Nobody knew that I was Ron’s dad,” Smith said. “Once this goes through, everybody’s going to know who I am.”

Smith, who was 83, sat in a recliner during the interview with his constant companion of the last 13 years on his lap. Queenie, a black miniature poodle, had been with him since his wife, Deloris, died in 2011.

His health was failing. He required a constant supply of oxygen fed to him through a long hose which allowed him to navigate his home.

Initially horrified by his son’s actions, he said he eventually made peace with him and was hoping that the intervention of the federal government would lead to his release.

“There just might be a light at the end of the tunnel you know? It would be nice to have him home for Christmas. My breathing is getting so bad. I don’t know how many more Christmases I’m going to get in. I’ve even got a room for him.”

Smith, who worked in the oil industry before he retired, said his son had a normal upbringing, but was constantly in trouble.

“He was a big problem and it was tough. His mother looked after Ronald while I was chasing the oilpatch. I was all over the place and it was hard for me to try and control him.

Ronald Smith and Rodney Munro admitted to marching cousins Harvey Mad Man, 23, and Thomas Running Rabbit, 20, into the woods by a highway in 1982 and shooting them both in the head with a sawed-off .22-calibre shotgun.

They wanted to steal the men’s car, but Smith also said at the time that he wanted to know what it was like to kill someone.

“I went for a long time and never had anything to do with him,” his father said. “Then I got to thinking there’s all kinds of people out there doing the same thing, or a lot worse, and are back out on the streets.

Munro accepted a plea bargain and was sentenced to 60 years in prison, but he was returned to Canada and released in 1998.

Smith said his son has changed.

“He’s paid his debt. Do I think Ron’s a good man? Oh yeah. He’s as good as you’re going to find. And I’m not just saying that because he’s my son.”

‘Send him home:’ Dad of Canadian on death row breaks silence weeks before passing away

William Jay Gollehon Montana Death Row

William Jay Gollehon montana death row

William Jay Gollehon was sentenced to death by the State of Montana for a prison murder. According to court documents the victim, Gerald Pileggi, was beaten to death with a baseball bat. William Jay Gollehom was serving a 130 year sentence for the murder of a woman. William Jay Gollehom was convicted and sentenced to death

Montana Death Row Inmate List

William Jay Gollehon 2021 Information

DOC ID# 19043
NAME: William Jay Gollehon
CURRENT STATUS: Secure
LAST STATUS CHANGE: Monday, October 7, 1991
GENDER: Male
INFORMATION CURRENT AS OF: Monday, March 15, 2021
Secure:
Montana State Prison
400 Conley Lake RD
Deer Lodge, MT 59722
(406) 846-1320

William Jay Gollehon More News

On September 2, 1990, the badly beaten body of inmate Gerald Pileggi was found lying in the exercise yard of the Montana State Prison in Deer Lodge, Montana.1 Several witnesses had seen inmates William Jay Gollehon and Douglas Turner both strike Pileggi multiple times with baseball bats. An autopsy revealed that Pileggi died from massive head injuries, including a blow to the top of the head which had caved in part of his skull, as well as a blow to the side of his face which had collapsed his forehead, torn his brain, and ruptured his eyeball.

Gollehon and Turner were jointly charged with deliberate homicide for the beating death of Pileggi. The information was later amended to add an alternative count of deliberate homicide by accountability .2 The difference between these counts, as explained by the Montana Supreme Court, is that the “charge of deliberate homicide by accountability allowed the jury to convict both men involved in the deliberate homicide without having to make the determination of who struck the fatal blow.” State v. Gollehon, 864 P.2d 249, 261-62 (Mont.1993) (“Gollehon I ”). After a joint trial, the jury found Gollehon and Turner guilty of deliberate homicide by accountability. Both were sentenced to death.

https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-9th-circuit/1545495.html

Douglas Turner Death

Death row inmate Douglas Turner was found hanging dead in his maximum security cell at Montana State Prison early Tuesday morning.

Guards doing their routine rounds of the building found Turner, 31, hanging from a part of his cell around 4:15 a.m. Tuesday, said Cheryl Bolton, a prison spokeswoman.

“It looks like an apparent suicide,” Bolton said.

Turner was pronounced dead Tuesday morning by the Powell County coroner who was called to the prison. His body was taken to the state crime lab in Missoula for an autopsy, which is required any time an inmate dies alone in prison, Bolton said.

Turner was a nine-time murderer who spent almost half his short life behind bars. He killed for the first time in 1987 — less than a month after his 16th birthday — when he shot dead three neighbors in his hometown of Glendive. Although not legally an adult, Turner was sentenced to 100 years at the state prison in Deer Lodge. Two years later, he and another inmate, William Jay Gollehon, beat to death fellow prisoner Gerald Pileggi with a baseball bat while the three were recreating in the prison yard.

Turner was sentenced to death for Pileggi’s murder and transferred to the prison’s highest-security building.

Less than year later, Turner took part in the 1991 deadly riot at the building, killing five other inmates. He was sentenced to life for the murder

Just how long Turner’s life would have been was up in the air. He had no execution date, Bolton said, and his latest appeal of his death sentence are still pending before the Montana Supreme Court.

Many details of the death have not been released. Bolton said she wouldn’t say what was in his cell because the death is still under investigation. Neither would she say if Turner had ever tried to kill himself before or if he was on a suicide watch at the time of his death, citing medical confidentiality.

In recent years, she said, Turner was not known as an unruly inmate. He had not received any disciplinary write-ups in the last seven years and he was not being punished for bad behavior at the time of his death.

Turner’s life was isolated. He was locked down in his one-man cell most of the time. He ate meals in his cell. He had not been outside the prison in some time, Bolton said. Condemned inmates are allowed out of their cells only to shower and to recreate in outdoor cages or a small internal day room for an hour-and-a-half every other day. Turner rarely ventured into the cages, Bolton said.

In Glendive, where his mother lives, Turner is still known as an infamous criminal.

“As far as I know, he is the most prolific murderer I’ve heard of in the state,” said Dawson County Attorney Scott Herring.

His family is expected to handle the funeral, Bolton said, but if that changes, the prison will bury him in a special part of the Deer Lodge cemetery reserved for deceased inmates.

https://billingsgazette.com/news/local/9-time-killer-hanged-in-prison-cell/article_3ebc026d-96fc-5093-b052-51e10f03d4d7.html