We know we weren’t the only ones taken aback by the news story last Saturday about the governor’s meeting with the family of Ron Smith, the convicted killer who is on Death Row for the murder of two young men in 1982.

Of course, the governor can meet with anyone he wants, including the relatives of Smith, or even Smith himself. That wasn’t the problem.

No, what soured us was the apparent eagerness of Gov. Schweitzer to convince Smith’s relatives, a news reporter and the entire state of Montana that he “sympathizes” with the plight of Smith, who is trying to escape the death penalty by asking the governor for clemency.

There is very little sympathy — in fact, none — for Smith around here. He killed two men in cold blood, essentially because he was curious what it would feel like, then stole their car as part of a multi-state crime spree, and after being caught pleaded guilty and sought the death penalty.

He got his wish. A judge who heard all the evidence decided that the death penalty was indeed appropriate. In fact, quite a few judges have made the same decision over the past 30 years. But not long after his initial trial, Ron Smith changed his mind. He decided he would rather spend life in prison than face the ultimate penalty.

We don’t blame him, but we would blame Gov. Schweitzer if he let his “sympathy” for Smith’s plight cloud his judgment about the appropriate punishment for cold-blooded murder.

Smith may have changed his mind, but that is a luxury that his victims never had since that day in 1982 when they were marched into the woods along U.S. 2 and executed with a sawed-off .22-caliber rifle. Thomas Running Rabbit Jr., 20, and Harvey Mad Man Jr., 23 — cousins and members of the Blackfeet Nation — probably would have changed their mind about playing pool with Smith and his two accomplices in an East Glacier bar. They would certainly have changed their minds about stopping to pick up their new friends when they saw Smith and his companions hitchhiking a short time later. By that time, Running Rabbit and Mad Man had less than a half-hour to live.

Yet Smith, after pulling the trigger that cost them their lives, has had nearly 30 years to live, to dream, to while away the hours. It’s not right. And no matter what has happened to Smith in those 30 years — no matter how remorseful he is, no matter how much he has changed — one simple fact remains. He hasn’t paid his debt.

The governor was quoted as saying in the Associated Press story last week that he keeps “coming back to this question of what is fair” and said “I don’t know what is fair.”

If that is really true, then the governor isn’t in any position to make a judgment of this importance. And if he finally does come to realize what is fair, then Ron Smith will have to accept his fate at the executioner’s hand just the way he forced Thomas Running Rabbit Jr. and Harvey Mad Man Jr. to accept theirs.