District Judge Dorothy McCarter had determined that Jeanette Swanson forfeited her interest in the children’s estates under Montana’s “slayer statute,” which says killers shouldn’t profit from their wrongdoing.
In an opinion issued last week, the high court said the slayer statute applies only to those who “feloniously and intentionally” kill someone and not to those “who lack the requisite intent.”
“We draw no conclusions today as to whether or not Jeanette is entitled to inherit from her children’s estates in this civil proceeding,” the high court wrote.
In October 2002, Swanson pleaded guilty to two counts of deliberate homicide for killing her 14-year-old son, Swen, and 10-year-old daughter, Louisa, while they slept at the family’s ranch southwest of Augusta. Her husband, Gene, and her two older children were uninjured.
Swanson was later found to have a severe mental disorder; doctors said she believed she had to shoot her children and send them to heaven to protect them from harm. She was sentenced to life at the state mental hospital on each count.
According to court records, Gene Swanson served as the personal representative for Louisa and Swen’s estates. Following a “resolution of issues with an insurance company,” he closed the two estates, said his attorney, Michael G. Moses of Billings.
Jeanette Swanson moved to reopen the estates and then made a claim to inherit from them, he said. Moses then filed a petition on behalf of his client to terminate Jeanette Swanson’s ability to inherit from the two children.
Moses declined to comment on what Jeanette Swanson was seeking to inherit.
“Until I speak to Gene, I can’t speak to those issues,” he said.
Jeanette Swanson’s attorney, Steven T. Potts of Great Falls, did not return a call seeking comment.
In the opinion written by Justice W. William Leaphart, the Supreme Court explained that because Jeanette Swanson pleaded guilty to both homicides, there has been no legal judgment on whether she acted feloniously and intentionally when she killed Louisa and Swen.
“Jeanette pled guilty to the shootings but all the while maintained that she intended to protect the children, not to hurt them,” Leaphart wrote. “Jeanette’s guilty plea may have been a strategic decision, or perhaps even a choice to spare her family the added trauma of a public trial. Due to the fact that she entered a guilty plea, the issues of whether she intended to kill the children and whether the killings were felonious were never fully examined at trial.”
Justice Jim Rice dissented.
Moses said he and his client will continue trying to block Jeanette Swanson from inheriting from the children.
“We will work our way through proving what the Supreme Court has indicated what we need to prove,” he said. “We will ... submit evidence that her actions were felonious and intentional.”
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