Barry Beach Won’t Go To Trial

Convicted murderer Barry Beach, granted clemency by Governor Steve Bullock in 2015, will not go to trial in Billings this week.  On Friday, city prosecutors reportedly filed a motion to dismiss their charges against him. Bullock signed an executive order granting Beach’s request for clemency after he’d served more than 32 years in prison for the 1979 murder of Kimberly Nees in Poplar, Montana. 

Beach had long proclaimed his innocence and applied for clemency, but Montana’s Board of Pardons and Paroles turned him down.  Soon after, the state legislature passed a law giving the Governor the power to grant clemency even if the Board denies it.  That law went into effect October 1, 2015.  Prosecutors initially believed there was probable cause to file charges.  However, since then the investigation lead them to believe that a conviction was unlikely.