Panel advances bill to abolish death penalty
DENVER - A bill to abolish the death penalty in Colorado advanced Wednesday when the state Senate's State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee approved it on a 3-2 vote.
By abolishing the death penalty, HB1274 would save an estimated $1 million a year, mostly by ending death-penalty prosecutions. Because the money saved would be transferred to the state's cold-case homicide unit, many family members of murder victims support the bill.
Sen. Morgan Carroll, D-Aurora, prime sponsor of the bill in the Senate, said $1 million, roughly a fifteenfold increase in funding for the cold-case unit, would make a difference in solving some of the state's 1,430-plus unsolved slayings.
"Our goal is to take these murderers off the streets," said Debra Meyer of Colorado Springs, whose brother, Ricky Espinoza, was murdered there in 2001 and is on the cold-case list. She testified in favor of the bill.
But Attorney General John Suthers testified that some crimes are so heinous that capital punishment is the only appropriate societal response. "That's not vengeance," he said. "It's justice."
Suthers and other prosecutors who testified asked that the issue be decided not by the Legislature, but by a statewide referendum.
The death penalty is used very sparingly in Colorado. The state has executed only one person in four decades, and its death row currently has only two residents.
But capital prosecutions aren't rare at all - the death penalty has been sought in 124 Colorado cases since 1980. And they are costly: Tamara Brady of the state public defender's office testified that its capital murder cases cost an average of $584,000 a year while first-degree murder cases cost $70,000 a year.
But supporters insisted money wasn't the central issue. They cited statistics indicating that the death penalty was no deterrent.
Others disputed the supposed healing benefits of the execution of their loved ones' murderers. Bud Welch's daughter Julie was one of 168 killed in the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. Six years later the bomber was executed - an outcome that Welch said he originally sought, only to change his mind.
"We took Tim McVeigh and we killed him," Welch said. "And there was nothing about that process that brought me any peace or any feel-good."
Wednesday's vote was along party lines, with the no votes coming from Republican Sens. Dave Schultheis and Bill Cadman, both of Colorado Springs.
The bill squeaked by the House last week on a 33-32 vote. Carroll predicted another close vote in the full Senate after its next stop, the Appropriations Committee.
If it passes and is signed into law by Gov. Bill Ritter, Colorado would become the 16th state to ban the death penalty.
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