Billings woman's death prompts changes, legislative proposals to aid domestic violence victims

Renewed attention was given to the issue of domestic violence in the wider Billings area following the April death of Shawna Grove, also known as Shawna Hart.

At the City Council meeting on April 27, Hart's relatives and community advocates packed chambers to memorialize her and call for reform.

“I hope this never happens again and I hope there’s never another kid like me standing up here begging for change,” Hart's son said at the meeting. 

While Billings City Council members often differ on their individual stances when it comes to various city issues, they demonstrated a united front while looking for gaps in the system.

"Going through this is a good educational process under unfortunate circumstances. This council has gotten what goes on in all of the different silos in family violence, and a lot of that was eye opening to a lot of us,” council member Scott Aspenlieder said. “We still need to identify those barriers that each one of these silos, each one of these departments and organizations is running into, and map those out. I don’t think we have clearly mapped out all the barriers that have been identified with these different groups.”

A committee for action

In conclusion Wednesday, Mayor Mike Nelson made a directive to establish a six‑month ad hoc domestic violence committee, with potential for renewal. The committee will focus on coordination of care and response, review related metrics and data, carry out a system gap analysis with action recommendations and benchmark Billings' processes with other cities.

"Emphasis on the word action,” Nelson said.

Nelson directed interim City Administrator Kevin Iffland to recruit council members and community partners to join this committee promptly, and to schedule its first meetings. Council member Amy Aguirre, who operates the women’s drop-in center, Angela’s Piazza, volunteered immediately. Nelson said the committee will focus — with urgency — to work on coordination, data, and system improvements.

“I want to stress that it's not to find fault, but to find ways to improve or fill holes or gaps,” Nelson said. 

High-risk warrants

One directive, about a month into implementation as of last week's work session, is to improve the speed of servicing of high-risk arrest warrants.

It was noted during discussions that Tanner Grove, the primary suspect in the murder of Shawna Hart, had two separate outstanding arrest warrants at the time of Hart’s disappearance, totaling $115,000 in bond.  

While the city likely has thousands of outstanding warrants overall, according to Billings Police Capt. Matt Lennick, a team has been assembled in coordination with domestic violence investigators that now goes out weekly to serve warrants on individuals identified as high-risk.

“They've been very successful every time they've gone out with the list of individuals that they're looking for, they have found individuals on their list, and they have incarcerated them,” Lennick said. “I foresee it being something that we continue to develop and utilize long term.”

Legislative proposals

The city’s legislative committee plans to advance three primary domestic violence reforms at the state level.

A top legislative priority for Domestic Violence Deputy City Attorney Ben Halverson is to fix a drafting error in Montana law which he said occurred a few years ago that effectively removed the ability to prohibit convicted domestic abusers from possessing firearms.

“That increases the risk of fatality significantly,” Halverson said. “Candidly, that will be a major lift, but I think on behalf of this community and state, we have to try whether it works or not.”

The legislative committee plans to work to restore and clarify Montana’s authority to prohibit convicted domestic violence offenders from possessing firearms, including clear procedures for firearm seizure and significant penalties for violations.

The legislative committee also plans to propose enhanced felony penalties for repeated or serious violations of orders of protection and no‑contact orders, allowing swifter escalation when offenders disregard court‑ordered protections.

The proposed enhanced felony penalties are designed to address patterns like those seen before the death of Shawna Hart.

After his first conviction, Grove repeatedly violated court‑imposed conditions, allegedly committed new assaults and failing to appear in court, all while subject to a no‑contact order and active warrants, according to Billings Domestic Violence Deputy City Attorney Morgan Lix.

Stronger felony‑level tools for order of protection and no-contact order violations would allow prosecutors and judges to escalate consequences sooner and more effectively incapacitate high‑risk offenders who repeatedly disregard protective orders, potentially reducing the window in which a fatal assault can occur.

The committee also plans to support legislation requiring judges statewide to consider standardized lethality assessments when setting pretrial release conditions and other key decisions affecting victim safety, Halverson said. 

“Now it is optional,” he said. “We want to require every judge across the state to do it.”

Reviews for change

Halverson noted the importance of reviewing domestic violence deaths, as it can expose hidden failures in laws and systems, which can lead to concrete state-level reforms and ensure that each tragedy leads to changes designed to prevent the next one.

It was a domestic violence case in 2003, Halverson said, that directly prompted the creation of the Montana Domestic Violence Fatality Review Commission. In years hence, those reviews have led to changes in state law, including the creation of the strangulation of a partner or family member statute and the revamped stalking statute.   

A statute change following a Bozeman stalking homicide in 2016 reduced the burden on victims to outwardly display extreme distress and instead lets the system rely on documented behavior and risk indicators — such as persistent unwanted contact, threats, weapon theft and break‑ins — to meet the stalking standard and intervene sooner.

“We did not let that death go in vain,” Halverson said. “That was something that was changed to prevent something like that.”