House Dems give initial approval to abolish death penalty

Tina Terry has more reason than most to believe in the death penalty. The Colorado Springs mother has had two family members, her brother and her uncle, killed in homicides.

Her brother, Troy, was stabbed to death just outside the Capitol while waiting for a bus, and her uncle, Bob, was stabbed to death in Commerce City.

But Terry made the trek to Denver on Monday to plead in support of a bill that would abolish the death penalty. The reason is simple: She wants those two killings solved.

"Don't look at me and tell me how sorry you are for my loss," Terry said to the House Judiciary Committee. "Do something."

HB1274 would abolish the state's death penalty and direct the savings, roughly $4 million, into cold-case investigations.

Her pleas were answered by House Democrats late Monday night when they gave initial approval to the bill. Every Republican on the committee opposed the measure.

Monday's hearing lasted more than five hours, and many death penalty supporters matched her tragic stories with their own.

Opponents of the bill included a juror from the trial of Sir Mario Owens, who was sentenced to death for several shootings in 2004. The juror, Sarah Crowley, warned that if the bill was passed, "justice will be reversed."

Another family member of a homicide victim lectured the House panel: "Anyone who votes for the passage of this bill, shame on you."

Attorney General John Suthers, along with a bevy of district attorneys from around the Denver metro area, also testified against the measure and argued that there are crimes that simply deserve death.

"When a person such as Timothy McVeigh successfully plots to blow up a government building and kills 180 people, is it an adequate societal response to simply incarcerate him?" Suthers asked.

House Majority Leader Paul Weissman, D-Louisville, is sponsoring the measure. He framed his bill not as a moral argument but as a question of "resource allocation."

Weissman pointed out that there are 1,435 unsolved homicides in Colorado, while only a single death-row inmate has been put to death in the past 45 years - murderer and rapist Gary Lee Davis, in 1998.

There are currently two death-row inmates in Colorado: Owens and Nathan Dunlap, who gunned down four employees at a restaurant in 1994.

The bill heads next to the House Appropriations Committee before going to the full House for a vote.