HELENA — By a slim margin, the House Judiciary Committee has endorsed a bill to abolish the death penalty and replace it with life imprisonment without parole.

The panel voted 11-10 on Wednesday to send House Bill 370 to the House floor for debate.

It was a dramatic turnaround to get the bill out of House Judiciary Committee.

In every legislative session over the past decade, it was the House Judiciary Committee that tabled similar bills to abolish the death penalty. Some of the previous bills had already passed in the Senate before getting tabled in the House committee.

“I was shocked,” said the bill’s sponsor, Rep. David “Doc” Moore, R-Missoula. “I didn’t expect it to come out of committee. I kind of feel I’ve got a tiger by the tail here.”

Moore said he figures the odds of the bill passing the House are 50-50.

“I know everyone has their own personal beliefs on it,” Moore said. “I don’t think that anything anyone says on the House floor during deliberations is going to sway anyone.”

Two Republicans — Reps. Clayton Fiscus of Billings and Bruce Meyers of Box Elder — joined all nine Democrats to vote for HB370 in committee, while the other 10 Republicans opposed the bill.

“Our death penalty is a joke,” Fiscus said Thursday.

After people are sentenced to the death penalty, he said taxpayers have to spend $3 million or $4 million providing them with public defender attorneys, including one specializing in death penalty cases to say they belong in prison.

Another reason Fiscus said he voted for the bill is that life in prison without parole “is worse than the death penalty” for the convicted person.

Fiscus said he also opposes the death penalty so the state wouldn’t have to worry about executing an innocent person.

Meyers explained his opposition to the death penalty by saying he came from a background of having a Native American father and a mother with a Christian background.

“That was part of my conscience, the way I was raised,” he said. “Native Americans view all life as being sacred.”

From a Christian perspective, Meyers said he prefers the New Testament, which “calls for mercy and grace” over the “eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth” philosophy of the Old Testament.

Moore recounted what he said in the committee hearing about the death penalty.

“You’ve got to decide yourself whether you personally could pull a trigger or press that button or pull the lever,” he said.