Actual excommunication (formerly called disfellowship and now called membership withdrawal) is a formal process with a lot of required procedure for it. There is no way Russ would have been excommunicated without him doing a lot of attempted rules lawyering, which would have ended up with him excommunicated for insubordination, but he would also have lengthy tales of woe about it.
They don't just give you the "left foot of fellowship" without giving you a chance to repent or at least EXPLAAAAAAIN!
Also much as with Catholic excommunication, the door is always open to repentance no matter what the offense, so long as the repentance is sincere. And the doctrinal purpose, similarly with both processes, is not to punish but to bring the person to repentance (although both LDS and the Vatican have abused the process for political reasons at times).