New Appeal Filed On Death Penalty Case

The man sentenced to die for killing four people at a Chuck E. Cheese's restaurant in Aurora in 1993 is now asking a federal judge in Denver to spare his life. In a 755-page motion filed in U.S. District Court in Denver, attorneys for Nathan Dunlap list 41 reasons his death sentence should be thrown out, including that his original defense attorneys were ineffective. The appeal comes one month after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case, and after the Colorado Supreme Court upheld the conviction and sentence for the third time. Dunlap, now 33 and the only person on Colorado's death row, was convicted in 1996 of first-degree murder for the deaths of restaurant employees Sylvia Crowell, 19, Benjamin Grant and Colleen O'Connor, both 17, and manager Margaret Kohlberg, 50. The jury also found him guilty of burglary, aggravated robbery, attempted first-degree murder, theft and first-degree assault.
Rocky Mountain News