Death Penalty In Colorado: Lawmakers Move Toward Repeal

DENVER, CO – By John Herrick for The Colorado Independent. In 2004, Alex Perez, then in prison on a murder conviction, was charged with killing a fellow inmate at the Limon Correctional Facility. He said he did not do it, but was promptly placed in solitary confinement at the Colorado State Penitentiary in Cañon City. Prosecutors sought the death penalty in the case.

In 2011, a jury acquitted Perez of the murder, in part due to the lack of physical evidence.
“Even in Colorado, an innocent man can be convicted and executed. I know, because it nearly happened to me,” Perez, 31, told a committee of lawmakers during a nearly six-hour hearing Wednesday on a bill that would end capital punishment in Colorado.

Perez urged lawmakers to pass the bill, and the Senate Judiciary Committee did just that, voting along a 3-2 party line. The vote marks a historic step toward making Colorado the 21st state to ban state executions for murder. The bill heads now to a full vote of the Senate.

Since 2000, there have been five unsuccessful attempts to repeal capital punishment in Colorado due to concerns of cost and racial biases in the criminal justice system. But Democrats now control the state legislature and the governor’s mansion, and optimism is high among members of the party. Gov. Jared Polis has already said he would not just sign the bill, but also commute the sentences of the three men on death row if the proposed ban passes.

Since the nationwide moratorium on death penalty was lifted in 1976 and later reinstated in Colorado, the state has executed one man, Gary Lee Davis, a convicted murderer and rapist. That was in 1997.

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