How to read a file

The inquest is a narrow public question

Montana puts a coroner and a jury between a custody death and a criminal charge. The hearing is public. It is not a trial. Knowing what it can say is the whole job of this desk.

MCA 46-4-201

An inquest is a formal inquiry into the causes and circumstances of a death, conducted by the coroner before a coroner’s jury. The coroner may hold one when a county attorney asks. The county attorney must order one in two situations:

A death in a prison, jail, or other correctional facility that is not caused by a terminal condition — the statute’s word — or by execution of a death sentence. A terminal-condition death still requires an inquest if the person was under medical care at the time.
A death while someone is being taken into custody, or is in a peace officer’s custody, or is caused by a peace officer — unless criminal charges have been or will be filed.

Text as published by the Montana Legislature. Last amendment noted on that page: Chapter 315, Laws of 2023. Read the section.

What the jury is asked

Who died.
When and where.
Whether the death was by criminal means.
If so, who committed the act, if known.

Missoula County’s own page describes the hearing as less formal than a trial, with no adversarial party. The coroner runs it. The county attorney assists and may examine witnesses. Jurors may examine them too.

What it does not decide

Civil damages, or whether a policy was good enough.
Whether a missed cell check was negligent in the civil sense.
Training, contracts, or medical staffing.
Immigration status, or whether a federal hold was lawful.

Roger Lee Wells, Michael Lee Alexander Jr., and Allen J. Longsoldier Jr. are on the docket as older published cases for this reason: a criminal-means finding and a later payment can both exist.

The sheriff who is also the coroner

Most Montana coroners are also sheriffs. Since the 2023 amendment, a peace-officer coroner may not conduct the inquest when the person died in that coroner’s jail, died in the custody of an officer in the same jurisdiction, or was killed by an officer in the same jurisdiction. The county attorney then asks a coroner from another county. That is why Anaconda-Deer Lodge County Coroner Jessie Sather presided over Missoula and Gallatin jail inquests in this docket. The requesting county pays the expense.

A separate fight, covered in legislative reporting, is whether that outside-coroner rule should be loosened because rural counties have few civilian coroners. The ACLU of Montana has argued the outside coroner is the transparency. This ledger does not take a side. It records that the disqualification is current law.

Federal court is a different drawer

A civil-rights suit in the District of Montana is usually 42 U.S.C. § 1983, or a claim directly under the Constitution, filed against an official. PACER is the federal courts’ pay-per-page system. This desk does not log into it. When a filing has been shared, the free copy is on CourtListener’s RECAP archive. If it is not there, the honest entry is “not in the public copy,” not a reconstructed complaint.

Political dissent is not a cause of action. A person can be a political commentator and also a criminal defendant. Those facts do not prove each other.

As of February 7, 2026, the Missoulian could not find a federal case for Samuel Pascal Redfern after an ATF raid. On October 13, 2026, the same paper headlined a redacted indictment against him. The readable allegation is firearm possession after a court had restrained him from harassing, stalking, or threatening an intimate partner. This desk still does not have the case number: the article body is paywalled, and PACER was not opened. An indictment is the government’s allegation. “Political prisoner,” the phrase his friends and family used, is not a count in that indictment. His June 2026 Missoula petition over a consumer-protection demand, DV-32-2026-0000664, is a third paper, and it is state court.

The rights cases are different paper. Held v. Montana, DA 23-0575, is a state constitutional opinion, not a federal filing. Imperial Sovereign Court, the Free Speech Coalition, Lighthiser, and Accountability in State Government are public lawsuits about speech or a constitutional claim, with case numbers this desk has actually read. The Montana Human Rights Commission award in the Longsoldier jail death is a state civil-rights path, not PACER. This is not a directory of every political speaker in the District of Montana.

Jurisdiction, and what stays off the desk

State paper follows the Montana Code. The inquest statute is MCA 46-4-201. Confidential criminal justice information is MCA Title 44, chapter 5. A protection order, a youth file, and a Judicial Standards grievance are not republished here just because a related fact was in the newspaper. Federal criminal allegations and federal civil-rights suits are United States Code matters. They are not turned into a Missoula district cause, and a firearms allegation is not given a statute number this desk has not read.

County jails

A jail death is a county case. The DOC roll does not include it. Expect a lag: NBC Montana reported in 2025 that Gallatin inquests for deaths in 2021 and 2023 were only then being held, and that toxicology can stretch an inquiry for months.

State prison

DOC posts a name, date, and place under the Public Records Act. Cause lives on the death certificate and, if one is held, in the inquest. Contract beds in Tallahatchie County, Mississippi, are still DOC custody for purposes of that roll.

ICE holds and JPATS

A civil immigration detainee in a Montana jail is often there under an intergovernmental agreement, not a state sentence. JPATS is a Marshals Service airline. Its schedules are not public, and this desk does not reconstruct them from radio traffic. An October 16 pass found no new record that independently proves a completed 2026 ICE or JPATS custody movement through Montana. Ohio charter reporting, a GAO camera audit, and two unverified airport funding actions stay national. A 2006 inspector-general table counts old non-federal requests from Montana. It does not name an airport. How to ask a coroner, a sheriff, or a federal agency is on the requests page.

Missoula County’s explanation of the hearing: Coroner’s inquests. DOC’s own description of the death roll: Deaths in custody.