× Thanks for reading! Log in to continue. Enjoy more articles by logging in or creating a free account. No credit card required. Log in Sign up {{featured_button_text}}

A judge has sanctioned the state of Montana over its delay in complying with a court demand to turn over documents that could reveal if there was manipulation of an expert witness in a case that halted lethal injections.

Montana Department of Justice spokesman Eric Sell said Tuesday that the agency had turned over the documents in response to the sanctions order from Judge James Reynolds.

They were given to the court and attorneys for the plaintiffs in the case: Ronald Smith and William Gollehon, Montana's only two death row inmates.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Montana, which is representing Smith, has questioned whether the testimony of expert witness Roswell Evans was manipulated at trial to bolster the state's unsuccessful claim that the drug pentobarbital was suitable for use in executions.

Sell says there was no manipulation by the state.

Smith and Gollehon sued Montana in 2008, challenging the constitutionality of its lethal injection statute. The suit focused on the state's plans to use pentobarbital in lethal injections after the Department of Corrections was no longer able to obtain sodium pentothal, the original barbiturate used in the state's two-drug execution protocol.