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Thread: Colorado Capital Punishment News

  1. #61
    Senior Member Frequent Poster NanduDas's Avatar
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    Another one bites the dust

    Colorado Senate tentatively approves bill repealing death penalty

    By James Anderson
    The Associated Press

    DENVER — Rhonda Fields stood at the Colorado Senate lectern Thursday, defiant and angry as she assailed a seventh attempt in recent years to repeal the death penalty — one that could finally pass this year in the state Legislature.

    It has been Fields, an Aurora Democrat, and many Republican lawmakers who have stymied past efforts, keeping Colorado's little-used capital punishment statute on the books.

    "The first word that comes into my mind is, 'Really?'," Fields began after co-sponsors Julie Gonzales, a Democrat, and Republican Jack Tate presented the newest bill on the Senate floor.

    "Will you please help the people of Colorado understand your motive and rationale for abolishing the death penalty when the people of Colorado don't want to?" Fields said.

    She and other opponents cited recent polling suggesting most Coloradans support the penalty — and she urged lawmakers to let voters decide the issue.

    After hours of debate, the Senate tentatively approved the bill. A second vote is needed to send it to the House, where Democratic leaders say its prospects are favorable.

    For Fields, the stakes are personal.

    Her son, Javad Marshall-Fields, and his fiancée, Vivian Wolfe — both Colorado State University graduates — were murdered while driving on a suburban Denver street in 2005. Robert Ray and Sir Mario Owens were sentenced to die for the killings.

    The third person on Colorado's death row is Nathan Dunlap, convicted of the brutal shooting deaths of four people inside an Aurora Chuck E. Cheese restaurant in 1993.

    In 2013, then-Gov. John Hickenlooper, now a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, indefinitely delayed Dunlap's execution. Hickenlooper has since come out saying he opposes the death penalty.

    On Thursday, the Democrat-controlled Senate engaged in a familiar, if ever-painful, debate over morality, faith, deterrence, discrimination against defendants of color and wrongful convictions.

    Some cited the fact that Colorado's last execution came in 1997 — and before that, in 1967. Gary Lee Davis died by lethal injection for the 1986 kidnapping, rape and murder of a neighbor, Virginia May.

    "This idea that murdering is wrong except when the state does it strikes me as untenable," said Gonzales, who sponsored similar legislation last year.

    "I don't support the state having the power over life and death under any circumstance," Tate declared, calling his stand a philosophical one. "The value of capital punishment has seen to present itself as possibly one of the most tragic set of false expectations I've run across."

    Sen. John Cooke, the assistant minority leader and a former Weld County sheriff, and other GOP senators argued that the death penalty has induced countless defendants to seek plea deals to solve or close cases.

    The bill would apply to offenses charged on and after July 1, and Gonzales made a point of saying that would leave Ray, Owens and Dunlap on death row.

    Fields countered that Democratic Gov. Jared Polis supports the bill and has suggested he would commute death sentences for the three.

    New Hampshire repealed capital punishment last year, becoming the 21st U.S. state to do so.

    https://www.coloradoan.com/story/new...ty/2858695001/
    "The pacifist is as surely a traitor to his country and to humanity as is the most brutal wrongdoer." -Theodore Roosevelt

  2. #62
    Senior Member CnCP Addict johncocacola's Avatar
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    They got the national popular vote interstate compact repeal on the ballot this year, maybe they could do this too.

  3. #63
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Neil's Avatar
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    Hopefully, but how likely is it? Plus, how many signatures are needed for it?

  4. #64
    Senior Member CnCP Addict johncocacola's Avatar
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    124,000 I believe out of the states 5.8 million people.

  5. #65
    Senior Member Member Big Jon's Avatar
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    Signature collectors can simply go to El Paso County (Colorado Springs) and Weld County (Greeley) to collect those signatures and that could be more than enough. There's always Aurora.

    I agree this should be decided by the voters not politicians.

  6. #66
    Senior Member CnCP Addict johncocacola's Avatar
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    The Assembly is likely to pass the bill tonight or early tomorrow.

  7. #67
    Senior Member Frequent Poster Steven AB's Avatar
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    Colorado is a state with veto referenda, initiated state statutes, and judicial elections.

    http://www.cncpunishment.com/forums/...l=1#post150162

    An initiative can be tried at any time, contrary to a referendum which usually can be tried only once a few times after the passage of the bill it aims to abrogate. California Proposition 66 in 2016 succeeded after a previous try in 2014 did not qualify for the ballot.

    A repeal of the death penalty in any of these states would be a Pyrrhic victory for the abolitionists, because that will only create the possibility of future (short term or long term) backlashes in the ballot box, as it happened in November 2016 in California, Nebraska and Oklahoma.

    Before the people death penalty foes have always been humiliated; their few recent victories were only with institutions controlled by the elites.

    The main challenge of course would be funding. It has been asserted recently that police and correctional unions, and individual correction officers giving small amounts, were decisive in Proposition 66 victory the day of President Trump's election.

    https://pacificsun.com/capital-intensive/

    A cumulative way is to find one or more wealthy donors. The 2016 Nebraska referendum was funded by governor Pete Ricketts and his father billionaire Joe Ricketts.

    Maybe Donald Trump or anyone else in the Trump family could be willing to donate (many anti-death penalty donors in California were out-of-state so, it can presumed that death penalty supporters have the right to do the same).

    In Colorado, Democratic senator Rhonda Fields and Democratic representative Tom Sullivan would be good candidates to sponsor such a ballot measure.

    https://www.npr.org/2019/03/17/70375...=1582146503480
    Last edited by Steven AB; 03-09-2023 at 01:25 PM.
    "If ever there were a case for a referendum, this is one on which the people should be allowed to express their own views and not irresponsible votes in the House of Commons." — Winston Churchill, on the death penalty

    The self-styled "Death Penalty Information Center" is financed by the oligarchic European Union. — The Daily Signal

  8. #68
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Neil's Avatar
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    I don’t foresee Colorado having a ballot measure though. The state is controlled by antis. Sununu has a better chance of a ballot initiative passing in the legislature there. The reason why I say that is because the demographics there can elect republicans. If Trump carries New Hampshire this year, his coattails would probably give the legislature back to the republicans then we might see Sununu push for a ballot drive next year.

  9. #69
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Steven AB View Post

    An initiative can be tried at any time, contrary to a referendum which can be tried only once a few times after the passage of the bill it aims to abrogate. California Proposition 66 in 2016 succeeded after a previous try in 2014 did not qualify for the ballot.

    A repeal of the death penalty in any of these states would be a Pyrrhic victory for the abolitionists, because that will only create the possibility of future (short term or long term) backlashes in the ballot box, as it happened in November 2016 in California, Nebraska and Oklahoma.

    Before the people death penalty foes have always been humiliated; their few recent victories were only with institutions controlled by the elites.

    The main challenge of course would be funding. It has been asserted recently that police and correctional unions, and individual correction officers giving small amounts, were decisive in Proposition 66 victory the day of President Trump election.
    That's all these what propositions attempting to resurrect the death penalty are, victories on paper. Prop 66 had zero effect in California, the governor just stopped it. No vote, no discussion, he just stopped it. Nebraska politicians just voted to get rid of it, no discussion, no public vote they just threw it out. The only reason the prop in Nebraska succeeded is because they had a governor with a spine, of which is rare. For an execution to even be carried out you need at least 20 years of solid and consistent policy regrading the death penalty. Coattails aren't going secure anything.

    The death penalty is dead in Colorado, it always was just move on. The single execution they had was a guy who dropped his appeals, they were never serious about it.
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

  10. #70
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Neil's Avatar
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    Liberal states will never execute again the only two states in the west that will execute someone again are Arizona if they finally get the drugs to do so, and Idaho. Montana likely conducted its last execution in 2006. Wyoming won’t ever execute again. They had one back in 1992. However, it’s very hard as capital punishment proponents to only see the same states over and over conduct executions. It should be nationwide which is why we want to see ballot drives to counter that trend. Plus, Colorado would probably have the potential to be a small death penalty state if it had the right politicians. Now that Trump flipped the 9th circuit, the appeals out west will take less time. Colorado needs to go through there progressive stage. Maybe in 15 years it’ll be reinstated there. That is only Trump wins re-election. He’ll make this country trend right again.

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