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Thread: Nathan Dunlap - Colorado

  1. #31
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    GOP state senator pressures Hickenlooper to carry out Dunlap execution

    DENVER — Sen. Greg Brophy, a Wray Republican rumored to be considering a run for governor next year, made a point of pressuring Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper to carry out the execution of Nathan Dunlap on Monday.

    Last Wednesday, a district judge ordered the Dept. of Corrections to set an execution date during the week of August 18 for Dunlap, who murdered four people inside an Aurora Chuck E. Cheese in 1994.

    Hickenlooper spent Friday and Saturday meeting with relatives of Dunlap’s victims, prosecutors and Dunlap’s legal team, which has made a formal request for clemency to the governor.

    On Monday, Brophy asked for a moment of personal privilege on the Senate floor — and spoke about all four victims before asking the governor not to intervene to postpone or prevent the looming execution.

    “We know that the Governor has said he is struggling with the decision to go ahead with the August execution of the murderer,” Brophy said. “He’s meeting with the prosecutors, defendants and interested parties.

    “We’ve read that the folks surrounding the Governor favor clemency. We know that the people of Colorado feel differently.

    “We’re just hoping that the governor does the right thing here and follows through with the justice that’s deserved,” Brophy said.

    Hickenlooper expressed his ambivalence last week during an exclusive interview with FOX31 Denver.

    “I think it’s the toughest thing I’ve had to deal with,” he said.

    FOX31 Denver also reported that Hickenlooper’s Chief of Staff Roxane White and General Counsel Jack Finlaw, the two cabinet members leading the administration’s work on the Dunlap case, personally oppose the death penalty.

    On Monday, as the execution date was being set, White made her feelings publicly known, tweeting from outside the courtroom: “There has to be a more humane solution.”

    With pressure starting to mount early, the governor’s staff is pushing him to make a decision sooner rather than later, knowing that the pressure will only intensify as the execution date nears.

    http://kdvr.com/2013/05/06/gop-state...lap-execution/

    I personally agree with Senator Brophy. Nobody is above the law, and if Gov. Hickenlooper grants clemency to Nathan Dunlap he will state that there are people who are above the law.

  2. #32
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    Sole survivor in Nathan Dunlap shooting recounts experience

    It's been almost 20 years, but the day Bobby Stephens almost died is far from a distant memory.

    "You kind of go numb to a certain point, but you never get over the pain," Stephens said.

    Stephens was the only one who survived when then-19-year-old Nathan Dunlap walked into a Chuck E Cheese restaurant and killed four employees. Stephens, who was shot into the face, ran into a nearby apartment and called the police. Later, he identified Dunlap as the killer.

    Dunlap had recently been fired from the restaurant, and he was convicted and sentenced to be executed in 1996. In the years since, Stephens has watched the appeals process - the memory of Dunlap's face the night he almost died etched into his mind.

    "Not only did [Dunlap] make eye contact with me, he also smiled at me when he shot me," Stephens said. "Throughout my life, I have never seen so much hatred; I've never seen so much anger in a person's eyes."

    Stephens wasn't even supposed to be working when hew as in the restaurant that night. He had asked for extra hours and found himself back in the kitchen. That's when he heard the first gunshot.

    "The first shot kind of startled me," he said. "The first thought that came to my mind in a kid's restaurant is somebody dropped something."

    He initially thought the second shot was someone in the game room popping balloons. And when he heard the third shot, he said Dunlap entered the kitchen area, and smiled as he pulled the trigger once more.

    "After he shot me, I remember I was unconscious for a short second. The second I was coming through and Nathan was standing over me, I was waiting for him to finish me off is what I was doing. I kind of figured 'that was it' but I played dead and I didn't move," Stephens said. "When I saw his shoes back past me, I got up and ran."

    He ran past the body of co-worker Sylvia Crowell and made a beeline for a nearby apartment.

    "I feel really sorry for the gentlemen that answered the door because when he answered the door, I grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him forward and I screamed at the top of my lungs, 'you gotta help me!'" Stephens said.

    The almost 20 years since the shooting have helped Stephens cope with what he saw, but he said he still suffers from survivor's guilt about 17 year olds Ben Grant and Colleen O'Connor, 19-year-old Crowell and 50-year-old Margaret Kohlberg: the four other employees who were in the restaurant that night.

    "The thing that still brings me to tears...the feeling of hopelessness or helplessness," he said. "There was nothing that I could've done that would've helped those folks."

    Last week, a Colorado judge set Aug. 18 through 24 as Dunlap's execution week, causing Dunlap's attorneys to scramble for clemency in the case, claiming that mental illness played a role in the 1993 shooting.

    ""I came to realize I didn't know that I was under the influence of bipolar. I did things I did at Chuck E Cheese. The things I did at Chuck E Cheese. The things I did leading up to Chuck E Cheese. There's a lot of things I was doing out there. I came to realize bipolar was playing a very big role in what I was doing," Dunlap said on a tape released by his attorneys.

    Stephens doesn't believe it's a crime that can be forgiven. He continues to advocate for the death penalty.

    "I'm a strong believer in that if you take a person's life unwillingly in such a horrific manner, I feel you should not be allowed to live," Stephens said.

    http://www.9news.com/news/article/33...pnews|bc|large
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

  3. #33
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    ""I came to realize I didn't know that I was under the influence of bipolar. I did things I did at Chuck E Cheese. The things I did at Chuck E Cheese. The things I did leading up to Chuck E Cheese. There's a lot of things I was doing out there. I came to realize bipolar was playing a very big role in what I was doing," Dunlap said on a tape released by his attorneys.
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

  4. #34
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    Attorneys file new challenge to Nathan Dunlap execution in Check E Cheese murder case

    Attorneys for the man convicted of killing four people at a Colorado pizzeria in 1993 have launched another legal offensive to stave off his execution.

    Nathan Dunlap's lawyers filed a lawsuit Thursday saying the way prison officials plan to put him to death could cause prolonged and excruciating pain, a violation of the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

    In April, Dunlap attorneys' argued that the state developed the lethal injection execution procedure without public input. However, the Colorado Court of Appeals sided with the state that argued the lethal injection execution procedure falls under the duties of the prisons director and don't require public input.

    Thursday's lawsuit also says officials are planning in secret for the execution, violating Dunlap's due process rights.

    An Arapahoe County judge recently set Dunlap's execution for the week of Aug. 18-24. Prison officials will determine the actual date. Since Colorado reinstituted the death penalty in 1976, only one person has been executed. Gary Lee Davis was executed in 1997.

    Dunlap has been on death row since 1996, when a jury convicted him of murder and sentenced him to die for the shooting deaths at a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant in Aurora.

    Dunlap's defense attorneys have also argued that Dunlap had an undiagnosed bipolar disorder when he committed the killings and therefore should not be executed.

    "We will not stop trying to save Mr. Dunlap's life now or next week or the week after," said Phil Cherner, Dunlap's attorney, last month. "We represent a very remorseful client, and it is a tragedy that this thing is moving forward."

    Dunlap's attorneys have released a video statement from Dunlap in prison. Dunlap has also written a letter to Governor John Hickenlooper pleading for his life, saying he feels regret, sadness and grief for the deadly shooting rampage.

    "Even though it is difficult for me to say I'm sorry, I am sorry. I do feel regret, sadness and grief. Not for getting caught but what I've done. I'm sorry for the pain and suffering I've caused the victims' families and friends, Bobby Stephens and his family and friends, and my family and friends," Dunlap writes. Stephens, a pizza parlor employee, was shot in the face but ran to a nearby apartment and called police. He later identified Dunlap as the killer.

    Hickenlooper hasn't said how he would respond to a request for clemency. He met last week with victims' family members and others to hear their views.

    Dunlap took the lives of night manager, Margaret Kohlberg, 50, a mother of two; Colleen O'Connor, 17; Sylvia Crowell, 19, and Benjamin Grant, 17.

    http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news...se-murder-case
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

  5. #35
    joerodney
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    The Old West has come a long way since the days when they would simply find the nearest tree for a killer like Dunlap.

    17 years have gone by, and he still hasn't been brought to justice for his heinous crimes.

    Governor Hickenlooper is a Democrat. The odds are that he will bend over backwards to spare Dunlap's life. Then again, the courts may take him off the hook.

    Dunlap is pulling out every trick in the book to stave off an appointment with his maker. What a shame that he stands a 50-50 chance of pulling it off.

    "We ... urge you to grant clemency because the death penalty in Colorado is deeply flawed," states a letter to Governor Hickenlooper, signed by former judges. "These facts depict a system that acts in an arbitrary fashion, based on factors such as race and geography ... Assuming that the death penalty may sometimes be appropriate, there is no principled reason for it to be applied in the circumstances of this case."

    This letter, signed by former judges, is absurd.

    Cold blooded murder is not a reason to apply the death penalty? Has Colorado gone completely over the edge?

    I wonder how these former judges would feel if Dunlap had killed their loved ones instead of the restaurant employees he killed? My bet is that they would be singing a different tune.

  6. #36
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    I agree with you completely joerodney, the clemency based on racial grounds is not appropriate in this case, I feel deeply sorry for all the victims dead or still living on that tragedy, they are being insulted by this parody of justice, this media circus trying to save the live of a cold blooded felon (Dunlap). If he pulls it off justice won't be served, and it will be a huge stain in Colorado's history

  7. #37
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    Letters urge governor to deny clemency for Nathan Dunlap, sentenced to death for 4 murders

    DENVER - Gov. John Hickenlooper is being asked to "show courage" by denying clemency for Nathan Dunlap, sentenced to death for killing four employees of an Aurora Chuck E. Cheese during a robbery in 1993.

    Letters to the governor from the Arapahoe County District Attorney and his deputy district attorney, the jury foreman on the last Colorado death penalty case and from State Representative Rhonda Fields were made public Friday. All of them argued that Nathan Dunlap deserves the death penalty for his crime because he admitted killing all four employees to eliminate witnesses in the case.

    The only other inmates on Colorado's death row were also convicted of killing a witness in a criminal case, the son of Rep. Fields, who was scheduled to testify against them.

    The jury foreman on the Robert Ray case, who did not want his name released, wrote Hickenlooper, telling him "Mr. Dunlap, as he stated himself, killed people because they would be witnesses. Freedom, peace and justice are all values worth more than any one of our individual lives."

    The foreman called the Chuck E. Cheese murders as "Aurora's original mass shooting." He also addressed augments that racism played a part in placing Dunlap on death row.

    "You must trust that your citizens are not racists or ignorant fools," the jury foreman wrote. "Show the nation that Colorado does not tolerate cowardly acts of mass murder."

    Rep. Rhonda Fields wrote the governor about her personal experience in the death penalty trials of Robert Ray and Sir Mario Owens -- the two men convicted of killing her son and his fiancé.

    Fields also argued that racism did not play a part in any of the three death penalty verdicts -- all rendered in Arapahoe County.

    "It was not the fault of the DA back in 1993 or the DA in 2005 that Dunlap, Ray and Owens all chose to commit their murders in Arapahoe County. It was the nature of the murders, not their locations, that cause the death penalty decisions."

    She called it "offensive" to suggest that race played a part in any of the cases.

    Regarding the Ray and Owens death penalty verdicts, Fields wrote, "… the jurors believed that the killing of witnesses was the main factor that required the death penalty." She added, "I know that Dunlap, when asked why he killed his victims, answered that it was because they were witnesses to his crime."

    She concluded her letter to the governor by saying, "I think that granting clemency would send the wrong message to criminals and to witnesses."

    District Attorney George Brauchler and Chief Deputy District Attorney Matt Maillaro wrote a joint letter to to Hickenlooper, stating, "He (Dunlap) took the lives of four Colorado citizens and justice requires he now pays with his own."

    "We ask you to take the courageous stop of not granting his request for executive clemency," the two also said.

    Dunlap has been sentenced to die by lethal injection during the week of Aug. 18. The last person executed in Colorado was Gary Lee Davis in 1997.

    Before that, the last person executed in Colorado was Luis Monge in 1967. Monge was executed in the gas chamber for murdering his wife and three children. Prior to his death, Colorado averaged one execution per year for the years the gas chamber replaced hanging in the state, which was 1934.

    http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news...-for-4-murders

  8. #38
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    Nathan Dunlap clemency appeal blasted by Arapahoe District Attorney

    By Karen Augé
    The Denver Post

    In an impassioned, at times angry, rebuttal to Nathan Dunlap's petition for clemency, Arapahoe District Attorney George Brauchler calls on the governor to "take the courageous step" and reject the condemned killer's appeal.

    The appeal, which asserted that Dunlap suffers from severe mental illness and is remorseful, offered no new evidence for saving Dunlap's life, Brauchler wrote in a 32-page response delivered Friday afternoon.

    "He took the lives of four Colorado citizens, and justice requires he now pays with his own," Brauchler wrote.

    On Monday, Dunlap's lawyers presented Gov. John Hickenlooper with a request to commute his death sentence to life without parole.

    The governor, who has met with dozens of advocates on both sides of the issue, has not reached a decision on Dunlap's request.

    In December 1993, Dunlap, then 19, went to the Aurora Chuck E. Cheese's where he once worked and killed 17-year-olds Ben Grant and Colleen O'Connor, 19-year-old Sylvia Crowell and 50-year-old Margaret Kohlberg, all employees of the restaurant who were closing it for the night. He also shot and seriously wounded a fifth employee, Bobby Stephens, and made off with about $1,500 in cash and game tokens.

    For that crime, a jury sentenced him to die, Brauchler reminded the governor.

    Arapahoe District Judge William Sylvester has set an execution date during the week of Aug. 18.

    To overturn the jury's decision now would be "a cruel and unjust slap in the face" to the families of those Dunlap killed, Brauchler wrote.

    The rebuttal, signed by Chief Deputy District Attorney Matt Maillaro as well as Brauchler, discounted assertions by Dunlap's legal team that he was in the throes of bipolar disorder when he killed his former co-workers.

    It questioned the motives and ethics of those who have argued on Dunlap's behalf, and those who diagnosed and treated him for mental illness.

    "But when our state's leaders are asked to accept as 'objective' evidence the conclusions of the anti-death penalty movement's 'best and brightest' experts, and to ignore their obvious collaborative biases, to disregard their abandonment of professional ethics, and rely upon their convenient 'scientific' epiphanies with respect to Nathan Dunlap's brain and behavior, it is then that we must say 'enough is enough,' " they wrote.

    The document called assertions by the defense that race plays a role in imposing the death penalty in Colorado "vile, disgusting and offensive."

    Just as Dunlap's attorneys assembled letters — and videotaped interviews — from death-penalty opponents, therapists and Dunlap's brother and sister urging compassion, Brauchler's office gathered testimonials from those in favor of executing Dunlap.

    One letter came from an unidentified woman who was originally scheduled to work at Chuck E. Cheese's the night of the massacre.

    "He needs to face the consequences ... and I pray after all of this time it will be done and the healing can continue for all that have been affected," she wrote.

    Another came from state Rep. Rhonda Fields, D-Aurora, whose son was murdered by the two men on death row alongside Dunlap. Robert Ray and Sir Mario Owens were convicted in the 2005 murders of Javad Marshall-Fields and his girlfriend, Vivian Wolfe. Marshall-Fields was killed to prevent him from testifying against Ray and Owens in another murder case.

    "Governor, I know that you are greatly troubled by this decision and I respect that. However, Dunlap's sentence has been approved by the courts for almost two decades; and I believe that it is appropriate," Fields wrote.

    http://www.denverpost.com/breakingne...#ixzz2T3MaSNTR

  9. #39
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    If any family of the victims happen to read this, could you please email me a picture of them to tpg_at_cncpunishment.com? We always like to show pictures of the victims if they are available. Condolences to you all.

  10. #40
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    Shooting victim’s mom to Hickenlooper: Execute Nathan Dunlap

    In the face of their client’s pending execution, Nathan Dunlap’s lawyers are asking Gov. John Hickenlooper to grant clemency to the man convicted of killing four at an Aurora Chuck E. Cheese 17 years ago.

    In a petition issued last week, the lawyers say Dunlap had undiagnosed bipolar disorder and the jury that convicted him did not know about his mental health issues.

    In a letter addressed to the governor this week, the mother of one of Dunlap’s four victims wrote a letter pleading with the governor to “make no decision.”

    “Sit back,” wrote Sandi Rogers, who lost her 17-year-old son Benjamin Grant in the attack. “Allow the (decision) that 12 people made after listening to all the evidence 17 years ago stand.”

    It was a clear plea, asking Hickenlooper to ignore the political pressure some believe is being placed on his shoulders by several Democrats hoping to abolish the death penalty — and hoping to begin that push with Dunlap.

    However, those same Democrats were unable to garner the necessary support to get House Bill 1264, a measure seeking to repeal Colorado’s death penalty, past a House Judiciary Committee during the last legislative session. This was despite the fact that Democrats hold a majority in both the House and the Senate.

    Though there was some speculation that Hickenlooper would have vetoed the bill if it has passed through the legislature, the governor is yet to take an official public stance on the death penalty.

    Now faced with publicly declaring a decision on the issue for the first time, Hickenlooper is weighing the opinions of Dunlap’s lawyers, the families of the Chuck E. Cheese victims and law enforcement officials. He has held private meetings with those groups over the course of the past two weeks.

    Sandi Rogers is making sure her voice is heard loud and clear, issuing the public letter this week. She claims that if Hickenlooper had been given the chance to meet with her son, who was mourned by hoards of fellow Smoky Hill students at his funeral in 1993, the decision would be an easy one.

    “I wish you could have … listened to all of the things said about him after this act of planned murder — the amount of love that flowed,” Sandi wrote, “I honestly think … you would have no doubt the decision for death.”

    Arapahoe County District Attorney George Brauchler and Chief Deputy District Attorney Matt Maillaro wrote a joint letter to to Hickenlooper echoing Rogers’ sentiments.

    The two said they’re “not asking John Hickenlooper to put Nathan Dunlap to death.” Instead, they wrote, they’re asking the governor to “defend the process that has lead us here.”

    http://kdvr.com/2013/05/14/shooting-...nathan-dunlap/
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

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