Abolish Death Penalty in Colorado
The Denver Post
By David Land
Re: "Capital punishment in Colorado: Foes weigh push to repeal," Dec. 26 news story.
It
appears that the Colorado legislature is finally poised to give serious
consideration to ending the barbaric, money-sucking relic of bygone
years known as the death penalty.
Since 1968, Colorado has
executed one person. The article in the Dec. 26 Denver Post noted that
the death penalty annually costs Colorado taxpayers $1.5 million. It
also quotes Attorney General John Suthers as saying that there are times
we need the death penalty "for the safety of the people."
Mr.
Suthers never explains how executing one person in the last 45 years, at
a cost of approximately $50 million, has made our state safer. Spending
tens of millions for one execution seems like the most preposterous
waste of money imaginable, especially when one considers the law
enforcement programs which could have been funded with those scarce
dollars.
Mr. Suthers simply resorts to the time-tested tactic of
whipping up hysteria over truly heinous crimes and offering a "solution"
to the problem which involves the government spending more millions to
kill people. There is not one shred of evidence that the per capita
murder rate in Texas, which executes someone almost every two weeks at a
cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, has been affected in any way
by the regular imposition of the death penalty.
No one disputes
the fact that the system currently in place as mandated by the U.S.
Supreme Court makes the death penalty far more costly than life without
parole. Mandatory appeals consume resources, as do penalty phase trials,
which almost always involve complex testimony from psychologists,
neurologists and other specialized professionals, all of whom must be
paid by taxpayers, as no one facing the death penalty has the resources
necessary to hire their own lawyers. The public foots the bill for the
prosecutors, the defense attorneys and all of the experts testifying on
both sides.
When Jared Loughner pleaded guilty in Arizona for the
Gabby Giffords shootings and was sentenced to life without parole, the
nightmare of court appearances ended for all of the remaining victims.
They would not be forced to testify at trial, they would not have to
endure endless appeals with the fear always lurking in their minds that
he would get a new trial and they would once again be forced to relive
the nightmare on the witness stand. He will be incarcerated forever, and
the victims can focus on healing and not on a court case which will
never end.
Nathan Dunlap has been on Colorado's death row for 20
years. Edward Montour's death sentence was reversed and he is back for a
new trial 10 years after the crime. Even if he is again sentenced to
death, 30 years will have passed between the crime and the punishment
and millions of dollars will have been wasted.
It is time for the
legislature to stop pouring money down this barbaric drain. As any
responsible law enforcement officer will tell you, killing people is not
the solution to crime in our society. The death penalty in Colorado
should be abolished.
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