A federal criminal case in Montana is heard in the United States District Court for the District of Montana — a court whose docket looks like no other in the Ninth Circuit. Seven Indian reservations lie within the state, most serious crimes arising on them are federal by statute, and the district sentences far more people — and far more violent-crime defendants — than Montana’s population would suggest. The system is federal from the first agent interview to the last post-conviction motion, and it rewards counsel who knows its particular rhythms.
This guide explains federal criminal defense in the District of Montana — the five staffed courthouses, the bench, the U.S. Attorney’s Office and its Indian-country and drug priorities, and how we represent defendants here. Elizabeth Franklin-Best, P.C. handles federal criminal defense, appeals, and post-conviction matters nationwide, and Elizabeth Franklin-Best has been admitted pro hac vice in the District of Montana — we have practiced in this court, not merely near it. This page is part of our federal courts directory.
If you are under federal investigation or facing charges anywhere in Montana — Billings, Missoula, Great Falls, or on any of the state’s reservations — we offer a paid, one-hour initial consultation to review the case and the calendar it is on.
Table of Contents
Quick Answer: District of Montana
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| What court handles federal cases in Montana? | The U.S. District Court for the District of Montana, a single statewide district with staffed courthouses in Billings, Butte, Great Falls, Helena, and Missoula. The statute lists eleven places of holding court, but those five are where the court operates. |
| Who prosecutes federal cases there? | The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Montana, led as of mid-2026 by Acting U.S. Attorney Mark Steger Smith, with a dedicated Indian Country unit of prosecutors. |
| Which circuit hears appeals? | The Ninth Circuit reviews District of Montana convictions and sentences — Montana shares that appellate court with the West Coast, Alaska, Hawaii, and the Pacific territories. |
| Where are post-conviction motions filed? | Back in this district — the judge who imposed the sentence rules on a Section 2255 motion, and the District of Montana granted 56 percent of the compassionate-release motions it decided in FY2025. |
| Has the firm appeared in this court? | Yes. Elizabeth Franklin-Best has been admitted pro hac vice in the District of Montana, and a paid, one-hour initial consultation opens every new matter. |
Key Takeaways
- One statewide federal district serves Montana, with staffed courthouses in Billings, Butte, Great Falls, Helena, and Missoula.
- Seven Indian reservations lie within the district, and the Major Crimes Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1153, makes much of the state’s serious violent crime a federal matter.
- The district sentenced 367 people in FY2024; assault appeared at roughly seven times its national share, a direct product of the Indian-country docket.
- Drug cases center on methamphetamine — 73 percent of FY2024 drug cases — with fentanyl already at 21.4 percent; the U.S. Attorney’s Office names meth and gun violence as its leading crime trends.
- As of mid-2026 the office is led by Acting U.S. Attorney Mark Steger Smith, with reservation cases routed mainly through the Billings and Great Falls divisions.
- Appeals go to the Ninth Circuit, and the 14-day criminal appeal deadline runs whether or not trial counsel plans to handle the appeal.
- In FY2025 the District of Montana granted 14 of 25 decided compassionate-release motions — 56 percent, among the most favorable rates in the nation.
- Elizabeth Franklin-Best has been admitted pro hac vice in this court, experience we bring to trial-level, appellate, and post-conviction matters statewide.
The District of Montana at a Glance
The United States District Court for the District of Montana covers the fourth-largest state by land area as a single district. The statute, 28 U.S.C. § 106, names eleven places of holding court — from Billings to Glasgow to Kalispell — but the court’s own website lists five operating locations: Billings, Butte, Great Falls, Helena, and Missoula. Where a case lands inside the district shapes everything from the assigned judge to how far witnesses and family must travel.
Chief Judge Brian Morris leads the bench as of mid-2026, joined by District Judges Susan P. Watters and William W. Mercer, Senior Judges Donald W. Molloy and Dana L. Christensen, and Magistrate Judges John T. Johnston, Timothy J. Cavan, and Kathleen L. DeSoto — the roster the court itself publishes. Appeals from all of them go to the Ninth Circuit, the same appellate court that serves the District of Alaska and the District of Hawaii.
Practice here runs on the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure plus the district’s local rules and standing orders. Admission to the court’s bar is reserved for active members of the State Bar of Montana, so out-of-state defense counsel appear pro hac vice — a procedure we have completed in this district before. Knowing the court’s local rhythms, from registration requirements to division-specific calendars, is part of the job.
The Indian-Country Docket: Seven Reservations, One Federal Court
Montana contains seven Indian reservations spanning more than eight million acres — Blackfeet, Crow, Flathead, Fort Belknap, Fort Peck, Northern Cheyenne, and Rocky Boy’s — and the U.S. Attorney’s Office maintains a dedicated Indian Country unit because of them. Under the Major Crimes Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1153, major offenses committed by Indians in Indian country are prosecuted federally. The office’s own operational plan routes cases from the Blackfeet, Rocky Boy’s, Fort Belknap, and Fort Peck reservations through its Great Falls division, and cases from Crow and Northern Cheyenne through Billings; the Flathead Reservation stands apart as Montana’s only Public Law 280 reservation, where state courts carry much of the criminal jurisdiction.
The consequences show up in the numbers: assault made up about 11 percent of the district’s FY2024 sentencings — roughly seven times the national share — alongside murder, manslaughter, and sexual-abuse cases that most states’ federal courts rarely see. Jurisdiction itself is often the first battlefield. The Supreme Court’s decision in Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta, 597 U.S. 629 (2022), recognized concurrent state jurisdiction over crimes committed by non-Indians against Indians in Indian country, and questions of Indian status, crime location, and charging authority remain live, litigable issues. We treat the jurisdictional posture of a § 1153 case as a defense issue from day one, not an assumption to be conceded.
Federal Criminal Cases in the District
The district sentenced 367 people in FY2024 — a heavy docket for a state of Montana’s population. Drug trafficking led at about 43 percent, with methamphetamine the primary drug in 73 percent of drug cases and fentanyl already at 21.4 percent; firearms offenses ran at 21 percent, half again the national share; and fraud and white-collar matters — including cases generated by the office’s Guardians Project, which targets fraud and corruption in federally funded programs — round out the picture. Procedurally, each one travels the same federal road from investigation to sentencing.
The typical arc starts with a federal investigation — signaled perhaps by a target letter, a grand jury subpoena, or an FBI interview on a reservation — and proceeds to indictment, the initial appearance and arraignment, pretrial motions and discovery, and then a plea agreement or trial, capped by sentencing under the Guidelines framework. Each stage is mapped in our federal criminal process hub.
Montana defendants also litigate more than most: 4.9 percent of FY2024 cases went to trial, well above the 2.8 percent national rate, and §5K1.1 substantial-assistance departures appeared in 18.9 percent of sentencings — nearly twice the national figure. At the same time, judges here varied below the Guidelines range in 44.8 percent of cases. Read together, those numbers say this district decides cases on their specifics, which is exactly how we build them — from suppression litigation through the sentencing presentation.
Applied Insight: In Indian-country cases especially, the earliest interviews — often conducted by the FBI or BIA within days of an incident, in communities where everyone knows everyone — generate the statements the entire federal case is later built on. Counsel who enters before or immediately after those interviews can still shape the record; counsel hired at arraignment inherits it.
What Federal Prosecutors Pursue in Montana
As of mid-2026, the office is led by Acting United States Attorney Mark Steger Smith, the district’s First Assistant, who assumed the acting role under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act on June 1, 2026; Montana, like several districts this year, still awaits a Senate-confirmed U.S. Attorney. The office’s published priorities are unambiguous: its current Indian Country operational plan identifies methamphetamine and firearms violence as the district’s two leading crime trends and commits to prosecuting drug and gun cases under Operation Take Back America and Project Safe Neighborhoods. Its June 2026 press releases show the spread — a felon-in-possession plea out of Missoula, a shooting prosecution from the Blackfeet Reservation, child-exploitation cases, and illegal-reentry sentencings.
For the district’s outsized firearms docket, the controlling Second Amendment authority is the en banc Ninth Circuit’s decision in United States v. Duarte, 137 F.4th 743 (9th Cir. 2025) (en banc), which upheld the felon-in-possession statute, 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), as applied to non-violent felons. The Supreme Court declined to take the question up in January 2026, and the national landscape on as-applied challenges remains unsettled and fast-moving. Anyone facing a § 922(g) charge in Montana should expect prosecutors to lean on Duarte — and should want counsel tracking the issue circuit by circuit.
Appeals and Post-Conviction Matters
Every conviction and sentence in this district can be tested in the Ninth Circuit, but the criminal notice of appeal is generally due just 14 days after entry of judgment under Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 4(b). That window does not pause while a family searches for appellate counsel — so we treat the appeal decision as part of the sentencing plan itself, made deliberately and on time, never an afterthought discovered in week three.
Post-conviction litigation returns to the District of Montana: motions under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 are decided by the sentencing court, and so are compassionate release motions under § 3582(c)(1)(A). The FY2025 data make this district a standout — it granted 14 of the 25 compassionate-release motions it decided, a 56 percent grant rate against a 14.1 percent national figure, in a circuit that already leads the country at 31.0 percent. Procedure still controls: the Ninth Circuit held in United States v. Keller, 2 F.4th 1278 (9th Cir. 2021), that § 3582(c)(1)(A)’s exhaustion requirement is mandatory when the government invokes it, so we build Bureau of Prisons exhaustion into every Montana compassionate-release engagement from the first day.
How the Firm Practices in This Court
Elizabeth Franklin-Best has been admitted pro hac vice in the United States District Court for the District of Montana, so when we take a Montana federal case we bring experience appearing before this specific court rather than a promise that admission can be arranged. The district reserves full bar membership for active members of the State Bar of Montana, which makes the pro hac vice route the standard one for out-of-state federal defenders.
The recognition behind that practice is national. Elizabeth Franklin-Best appears in The Best Lawyers in America 2026 as a “Best Lawyer” in Appellate Practice, carries a Chambers USA 2026 ranking for Litigation: White-Collar Crime & Government Investigations, and is admitted to the U.S. Supreme Court and every federal circuit. She has appeared in more than 330 federal proceedings, including over 100 appeals across all twelve circuits, and is the author of Reversing Your Criminal Conviction, a practitioner’s guide to post-judgment litigation. In a district whose docket swings between § 1153 violent-crime trials and federal-program fraud, that combination — a nationwide record, appellate depth, and white-collar credentials — is the right toolkit.
Most of what decides a Montana federal case happens at identifiable pressure points: the first FBI or BIA interview, the plea decision, the sentencing hearing, the 14-day appeal window, and the post-conviction stage where this district’s numbers are unusually favorable. We staff those pressure points deliberately, for clients in Billings, Great Falls, Missoula, and everywhere between. Results can never be promised in advance; rigorous, court-specific preparation can be — and is.
Frequently Asked Questions
What court handles federal criminal cases in Montana?
Federal criminal cases anywhere in Montana — including on the state’s seven Indian reservations — are heard in the United States District Court for the District of Montana. The court operates from five staffed courthouses: Billings, Butte, Great Falls, Helena, and Missoula.
Who prosecutes federal crimes in the District of Montana?
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Montana, led as of mid-2026 by Acting U.S. Attorney Mark Steger Smith. The office runs a dedicated Indian Country unit and identifies methamphetamine and firearms violence as the district’s leading crime trends.
Which appeals court covers the District of Montana?
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. A Montana appeal is briefed and decided under the same rules as an appeal from California or Arizona, and the criminal notice of appeal is generally due within 14 days of the entry of judgment.
How does a federal criminal case proceed in the District of Montana?
Investigation, charging, arraignment, pretrial motions, then plea or trial and sentencing. Montana adds a distinctive front end: in reservation cases, FBI or BIA agents usually conduct the decisive interviews within days of an incident, and federal jurisdiction under 18 U.S.C. § 1153 may itself be contested.
Has the firm appeared in the District of Montana?
Yes. Elizabeth Franklin-Best has been admitted pro hac vice in the U.S. District Court for the District of Montana — actual appearance credentials in this specific court, which matters when court-specific familiarity is part of what you are hiring.
Does the firm handle federal cases in the District of Montana?
Yes — trial-level defense, Ninth Circuit appeals, § 2255 motions, and compassionate release. Each engagement begins with a paid, one-hour initial consultation focused on the documents that actually control the case, whether that is the indictment, the plea agreement, the presentence report, or the judgment.
Why are so many Montana federal cases violent-crime cases?
Because of Indian-country jurisdiction. Under the Major Crimes Act, serious offenses committed by Indians on Montana’s reservations are prosecuted federally rather than in state court. That is why assault alone made up about 11 percent of the district’s FY2024 sentencings — roughly seven times the national share — and why murder, manslaughter, and sexual-abuse charges appear regularly on this federal docket.
Which Montana reservations fall under federal criminal jurisdiction?
Six of the seven — Blackfeet, Crow, Fort Belknap, Fort Peck, Northern Cheyenne, and Rocky Boy’s — operate under the federal framework, with cases routed mainly through the Great Falls and Billings divisions. The Flathead Reservation is Montana’s only Public Law 280 reservation, so state courts exercise much of the criminal jurisdiction there.
How does the District of Montana treat compassionate-release motions?
In FY2025 it was one of the most receptive courts in the country: of 25 compassionate-release motions decided, 14 were granted — 56 percent, versus 14.1 percent nationally. The Ninth Circuit enforces the requirement that the request first be exhausted with the Bureau of Prisons, so timing and paperwork matter as much as the merits.
Talk With a Federal Criminal Defense Lawyer
Federal time moves quickly in Montana — grand juries sit, the 14-day appeal clock runs, and § 2255 limitation periods expire quietly. If your case is in this district, at any stage from investigation through compassionate release, schedule a paid, one-hour initial consultation. We will review the record, explain how this court actually behaves, and give you a plan you can act on.