'It's devastating'

After convictions for petty crimes in multiple states in the year and a half after the 1987 rape was committed, Tipton returned permanently to Montana. He worked for years on a ranch in Big Sandy and now lives with family in White Sulphur Springs.

The state previously settled for $3.5 million with Jimmy Ray Bromgard, who was wrongly convicted in the case and served roughly 15 years in prison before his exoneration.

In 2017, Linda Tokarski Glantz came forward publicly as the victim of the 1987 rape. Reached Tuesday, she said she’d gotten a call from the attorney general's office earlier that morning telling her the petition had been denied.

“It’s devastating but it’s not unexpected,” Glantz said. “It’s hard to get a case through to the Supreme Court, and I knew that from the beginning.”

Still, she said she was grateful for all the work put into the case.

“Overall I think about all the people who put so much time and effort into this, and I think about all the people I connected with through this process, and I can’t call it a waste of time,” she said.