DENVER (CBS4) – In 1859, Colorado carried out its first execution. In 2020, the state legislature is poised to repeal the death penalty.
Opponents of capital punishment have introduced six bills in 12 years, but this year they say they have the votes – on both sides of the aisle – to pass a bill abolishing it.
Family members of two law enforcement officers were among those who testified at the bill’s first hearing. Jim Gumm says his son would have wanted him to speak-up.
The hearing comes almost two years to the day when Adams County Deputy Heath Gumm was shot and killed in the line of duty.
The bill would almost certainly take the death penalty off the table in his case.
“People will say that the death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment, but basically my life for the last two years has been cruel and unusual punishment and will be to the day I die,” Gumm said.
Gail Rice’s brother – Denver Police Officer Bruce VanderJagt – was also shot and killed in the line of duty.
“In a death penalty case, you go through hell as a murder victim’s family member.”
VanderJagt’s killer was eligible for the death penalty, but committed suicide. Rice opposes capital punishment.
“It cuts off the possibility of forgiveness and reconciliation and redemption that is at the heart of my Christian faith,” she said.
Gumm says voters – not lawmakers – should decide whether to get rid of the death penalty.
“We let them make the decision as a jury what penalty to use so it should be up to the people to determine what penalties are available.”
Prosecutors are also divided. Denver District Attorney Beth McCann says the state shouldn’t be in the business of killing people.
“The punishment for this kind of crime is automatic life without parole. People sentenced to life without parole will die in prison. The only reason to seek the death penalty is to hasten the death.”
But Arapahoe County District Attorney George Brauchler – who prosecuted the Aurora theater shooter – says all murders are not the same.
“They will essentially have lowered the bar for potential punishment for child murderers, for people who seek to kill a judge or a witness to avoid responsibility for mass murder, acts of terrorism, mass murderers, serial murderers. They will have lowered the bar for all of those and ensured that every single murder in the state of Colorado from this day to eternity will go to trial.”
He says suspects will now have nothing to lose by going to trial.
The bill is not retroactive, but Gov. Jared Polis has said if the legislature repeals the death penalty, he will commute the sentences of the three men currently on death row, all of whom are African American.
Opponents of capital punishment argue black men are more likely to be put to death, but according to analysis by CBS4’s partner The Colorado Sun almost half of those executed in Colorado have been white.
Source: denver.cbslocal.com, Staff, January 27, 2020
Colorado lawmakers take up death penalty repeal
The families of murder victims are at the state Capitol Monday urging the repeal of the state's death penalty.
The Senate Judiciary Committee took up Senate Bill 100 Monday afternoon, the first step in a bill that has fallen apart quietly each time it's been raised in recent years.
This year, however, the legislation has bipartisan support, though it is still opposed by state Sen. Rhonda Fields, an influential, if not revered, legislator from Aurora.
Of the three men on Colorado's death row, two have direct ties to Fields, whose son, Javad Marshall Fields, and his fiancee, Vivian Wolfe, were killed in a shooting in 2005, before he was scheduled to testify as a witness against gang members. Sir Mario Owens and Robert Ray are awaiting their death sentence.
The pending legislation would not affect them, and apply to sentencing after July 1, if it's signed into law.
Denver District Attorney Beth McCann spoke in favor of repeal. She said it should be handled by the legislature, not the political process and big-dollar process of a ballot question.
"It is a moral issue for me," said the former Democratic state legislator. "I do not believe that the state should be in the business of killing people."
She said the argument that capital punishment is a deterrent doesn't hold up. McCann said the shooter in the Aurora theater massacre and other deadly assaults were not deterred by the potential of a death sentence.
"These cases takes way too long and drain way too many resources," McCann said.
Fields was not available for comment coming off the floor of the Senate or at her office Monday morning.
"Grief and trauma have wreaked havoc on my body and my soul," Sharletta Evans of Aurora said at the Capitol Monday. Her 3-year-old son was killed in a drive-by shooting in 1995. Two gang members got life in prison, and the driver, who was 16 years old, got a 10-year sentence for cooperating.
His brother, Calvin, was at his side, and Monday morning he was at his mother's side at the Capitol as she urged lawmakers to invest the millions they spend on prosecuting death cases to instead use that money on prevention programs, especially related to gang violence.
"A stain on our history"
"The death penalty in Colorado is a stain on our history," Evans said. "As one of the country's trendsetters, here in Colorado our reputation has suffered under the weight of it. We should focus our energy on the lives and the hope and the character of out young people and address the root causes of violence, rather than pouring our resources into a system that only comes at the end, when it's too late that distract us from our values of life."
Lieutenant Hollis said his niece, Faye Johnson, was 22 years old when she was was killed in Aurora by Vincent Groves in 1988. Groves is believed to be Colorado's most prolific serial killer, taking the lives of 24 women between 1979 and 1988. He died in prison in 1996.
His niece left behind three daughters who received no help from the courts, while her killer became a cared-for celebrity behind bars.
Each time his name came up, through court proceedings or in the media, it kept the emotional wounds "fresh and festered," Hollis said.
Death penalty cases costs millions in the court and jail systems, plus decades to carry out. Since the death penalty was restored at the federal level in 1976, Colorado has carried out just one execution — Gary Lee Davis in 1997 for the 1986 kidnapping and rape of a neighbor, before he shot her to death.
Gail Vanderjagt Rice spoke on behalf of her brother, the late Bruce Vanderjagt, a Denver police officer who was murdered by a burglar armed with an automatic rifle in 1997. The alleged shooter, Matthaeus Jaehnig, was found dead three hours later from a self-inflicted gunshot wound using Vanderjagt's service revolver he had apparently taken.
Rice had already been doing volunteer work in jails and prison and already opposed the death penalty, she said. It was a question of faith. She believes in restorative justice, an opportunity for atonement.
"I think that's God's plan for justice," she said. "The reason that I oppose the death penalty the most, among many reasons, is it violates my Christian faith."
Colorado lawmakers, mostly Democrats but some Republicans, are taking another legislative run at repealing the state's death penalty.
The legislation is sponsored by Republican Sen. Jack Tate of Centennial is sponsoring the bill with three Democrats: Sen. Julie Gonzales of Denver and Reps. Jeni Arndt of Fort Collins and Adrienne Benavidez of Adams County.
Gov. Jared Polis has said he's ready to sign a death penalty repeal if the legislature can deliver him a bill.
Source:
coloradopolitics.com, Joey Bunch, January 27, 2020
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
