DA Puts Her Thumb On Scales Of Justice

The Denver Post

Carol Chambers gives capital punishment a bad name.

If you were comfortable with the death penalty, you might rethink your position now that Chambers' district attorney office has withheld bombshell defense evidence in a capital case.

Papers filed Thursday in Lincoln County District Court accuse her staff of hiding key facts — including a threatening letter and the killing of another inmate. Both were crucial to David Bueno's ability to defend himself against charges he murdered a fellow inmate at the Limon Correctional Facility.

"Words cannot express the enormity of this discovery violation and the detrimental impact it had on Mr. Bueno's defense," public defenders railed. "The nondisclosure of this type of information, contained within their own file, in a death penalty case, violates fundamental fairness and is shocking to the universal sense of justice."

Chambers, the elected DA in the 18th Judicial District, didn't return calls seeking comment.

She has been criticized for pursuing the death penalty only slightly less casually than ordering a tuna sandwich.

Eyebrows were raised in 2006 when she sought execution for Bueno, then a convicted burglar and robber, for the 2004 stabbing death of Jeffrey Heird, a white supremacist labeled as a rat for not warning fellow white inmates about a drug bust in prison.

A jury took nearly four days to find Bueno guilty of first- degree murder, and about two hours to sentence

---

---

him to life in prison rather than death by lethal injection, as Chambers had sought.

Bueno's defense centered on the theory that white supremacists at the prison killed Heird and blamed his death on three Hispanic inmates, including Bueno and his co-defendant, Alejandro Perez.