Death Penalty In CO: Activists Think 'Blue Wave' May Abolish It

ACROSS COLORADO – By Lars Gesing for The Colorado Independent. Opponents of the death penalty — hoping to capitalize on the blue wave that swept Colorado in November’s midterm elections — plan a concerted effort to abolish capital punishment in the state after a string of failed attempts.

“I have worked on this issue for several years but wasn’t able to get it passed,” said outgoing Democratic State Sen. Lucia Guzman, the former minority leader. “But I think this year is going to be the year.”

Guzman says she recently spent a lot of time with Rep. Jeni Arndt, a Fort Collins Democrat, who is working on a bill to do away with the death penalty in Colorado. In an interview with The Colorado Independent, Arndt said she called Guzman in June and asked for the lawmaker’s blessing to pick up the abolition fight. Arndt declined to discuss specifics until the draft bill is finalized but said among the outstanding questions is whether repeal would be applied proactively or retroactively — a question with major implications for Colorado’s three current death row inmates.

Activists opposed to the death penalty see Arndt’s legislation as having a better shot at passage given the new Democratic legislature and Gov.-elect Jared Polis’s signaling that he would sign a bill to abolish capital punishment.

Polis recently told 9News that he feels the death penalty is “not cost effective, it’s not an effective deterrent, and, you know, I do have a problem with some of the ways it’s been implemented from a racial bias perspective, as well.”

Arndt called Polis’s statements a “game changer.” She already has won the support of Rep. Adrienne Benavidez, a Commerce City Democrat who Arndt says has signed onto the bill. The duo is now reaching out to lawmakers of all political stripes, trying to frame the issue as a moral rather than a partisan decision.

“I can’t imagine how you can compromise on this,” Arndt said. “It is a binary bill — this is an either-or push. I think what we have to do is build coalitions. I don’t think there is going to be a lot of persuasion.”

Currently, 20 states have banned the death penalty, while it remains legal in 30 states — including Colorado. Beyond the moral debate over whether the government should kill a killer, capital punishment opponents in Colorado argue that racial disparities in death penalty cases, the limited shelf life of lethal drugs, and the immense cost of such cases all weigh against keeping a rarely used punishment in place. The American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado estimates the average death penalty case costs taxpayers $3.5 million, compared to roughly $150,000 for life in prison without parole.

READ MORE in The Colorado Independent

Photo by Ken Piorkowski via Flickr: Creative Commons