A U.S. lawsuit by Alberta-born double-murderer Ronald Smith -- the only Canadian citizen facing the death penalty in the United States -- has put
Montana's controversial execution chamber itself on death row.
Facing a legal challenge from Smith over the alleged "cruelty" of Montana's lethal-injection mode of capital punishment, state officials have advised a judge hearing the case that the makeshift facility used for decades to administer a fatal dose of drugs to condemned prisoners -- a converted trailer on the grounds of Montana State Prison -- will be shut down this year after a new "multi-purpose storage room" is added to the jail's maximum security building for executions and other uses.

The plan has put Smith's lawsuit -- backed by the American Civil Liberties Union -- on hold until the design of the $300,000, 72-sq. metre addition is complete.

The prison's current execution trailer has long been targeted by Montana death penalty opponents as a symbol of what they claim is the state's "inhumane" protocol for carrying out lethal injections.

The existing "death chamber" is a "1960s model" trailer, says Smith lawyer Greg Jackson, adding that the lawsuit is being delayed pending the redesign because the state's execution protocol "is integrally tied to the facility."

The Smith lawsuit argues that the trailer is "small and crowded," and isn't adequately equipped with the technology required to deal with problems that could arise during an execution and cause "unnecessary pain and suffering" for the prisoner.

"The trailer will be moved out of the way when work begins on the addition in June," Bob Anez, a spokesman for Montana's corrections department, told Canwest News Service. "The addition is intended to provide better storage for the maximum security unit."

Smith won a different lawsuit last year in Canada that forced the Conservative government to restart an abandoned bid to seek clemency for him from Montana's governor. Canadian diplomats, guided by this country's abolition of capital punishment in the 1970s, had spent years lobbying Montana officials to have Smith's death sentence lifted and to allow his transfer to a Canadian prison.

But in October 2007, following a Canwest News Service story about renewed efforts by the Department of Foreign Affairs to secure clemency for Smith from Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer, the Conservative government announced that the effort clashed with its tough-on-crime agenda and that it was halting all efforts to save the Canadian murderer from execution.

That decision was quashed, however, after the Federal Court of Canada ruled in March 2009 that the government had "unlawfully" violated Smith's rights by suddenly and arbitrarily ending the clemency bid without a clear policy framework to justify the move.

The government has since pledged to resume the push for clemency.

Smith's death sentence was also challenged last year in a U.S. court over alleged failings by the lawyer who represented him in 1983 after the Canadian had confessed a year earlier to shooting two young, Blackfoot Indian men in Montana -- Thomas Running Rabbit and Harvey Mad Man -- and then stealing their car during a hitchhiking trip from Alberta to California.

A ruling on that appeal -- aimed at reducing Smith's sentence to life in prison -- is expected this year. But a defeat in the case would put Smith one step closer to a scheduled execution date and a short walk from his cell at the state prison in Deer Lodge, Mont., to the four-metre-wide execution trailer.

Three deaths by lethal injection have been carried there since 1995. The last time the beige, metal structure was used for that purpose was in August 2006, when killer David Dawson -- convicted in the 1986 kidnapping and strangling of three people -- was given a fatal infusion of a three-drug mixture that induces unconsciousness, paralysis and, finally, heart failure.

Condemning lethal injection procedures in Montana as "state sanctioned homicide" performed by "untrained individuals," the ACLU filed the lawsuit on Smith's behalf in April 2008 with the aim of halting all executions in the state.

The lawsuit said Montana's lethal injection procedure follows "a protocol that is not even allowed in the euthanasia of a household pet" under state veterinary rules.

"Botched executions in Florida and Ohio, which use a three-drug protocol similar to Montana, have graphically illustrated how lethal injections go awry, and the great pain and suffering inflicted on condemned prisoners," the ACLU said at the time. "They show how untrained individuals can mismanage this lethal injection procedure, resulting in prolonged pain and suffering to the condemned."