Two judges ruled last week on the pending execution of killer Ron Smith — one got it right; one got it horribly wrong — and once again the life of an unrepentant killer is unconscionably extended while his two young victims await justice on the other side of the grave.

There’s never been any doubt about what Smith did. He confessed to murdering Harvey Mad Man Jr. and Thomas Running Rabbit Jr. after the Browning cousins picked him up hitchhiking. Smith told authorities he wanted to know what it felt like to kill someone. Apparently he discovered that he liked it, because after shooting Mad Man in the back of the head with a sawed-off rifle, he coldly walked up to Running Rabbit and did the same. No remorse, no regret, no hesitation.

But if Smith was brutally instant in his execution of Mad Man and Running Rabbit, the state of Montana has been painfully slow in doing the same to Smith. This crime did not take place last year, or five years ago. It was not 10 years ago or 20 years ago. It was 28 years ago that Smith outraged decency and human society, and yet he remains insistently, mockingly alive — turning justice into a game of chance.

On Monday, Judge Jeffrey Sherlock of Helena halted Smith’s execution for the umpteenth time. Turns out that Smith, who originally asked for the death penalty, doesn’t “approve” of the way Montana now puts its capital-crime inmates to death by lethal injection, and is making an argument that it is unconstitutionally “cruel and unusual” punishment.

Sherlock took pity on Smith in a way that Smith never did for his victims. The judge said he felt obligated to grant the injunction halting Smith’s execution because imposing the death sentence would “cause great and irreparable injury to Plaintiff.”

Perhaps the judge does not see the irony in his words, but we know that Montana citizens who have grown old waiting for Smith to pay for his crime DO. We know that the families of Harvey Mad Man and Thomas Running Rabbit DO. If the death penalty will cause “great and irreparable injury” to this murderer, then what are we waiting for? The continued existence of Ronald Smith among the living causes “great and irreparable injury” to our sense of justice.

Fortunately, District Judge John Larson of Missoula was not deterred by Sherlock’s ruling. He ordered that Smith should be put to death on Jan. 31, 2011. He said there was nothing else he could do.

We agree.

Everyone who opposes the death penalty is welcome to make an effort to ban it through legislation or initiative, but they should not be free to undermine respect for the law by flouting it.

It’s time for Ron Smith to die.