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Effort to make it easier to deliver death sentence fails in Colorado

Ellen Roberts joins Democrats in opposition

DENVER – Sen. Ellen Roberts offered the swing vote Wednesday in rejecting a measure that would have made it easier for Colorado juries to deliver the death penalty.

The Durango Republican joined Democrats in ending the effort.

The bill would have changed the requirement to 11 out of 12 members of a jury needed in order to sentence someone to death. Current law requires unanimous agreement.

“I had a lot of sleepless nights sorting this through, but I’m very comfortable with where I landed,” Roberts told The Durango Herald following the 3-2 vote, underscoring that she still supports the death penalty.

The bill was proposed in the wake of the Aurora movie theater trial, in which James Holmes was spared a death sentence, despite being found guilty of murdering 12 people and injuring 70 more during a mass shooting in 2012.

Sen. Kevin Lundberg, R-Berthoud, who carried the measure, and has a staunch pro-life record, said the bill was about saving lives.

“It’s the force of government that stands in the way of the bully from taking advantage of the weaker; from the murderer from taking the life of someone else,” Lundberg said. “The death penalty is part of that mechanism.”

His original intent was to change the requirement to nine out of 12 jurors to deliver a death sentence. He thought 11 jurors would be a compromise.

Tom Sullivan, who lost his son, Alex, in the Aurora theater shooting, testified in support of the bill. Alex was celebrating his 27th birthday and first wedding anniversary at the time of the massacre.

“A jury of his peers said that guy knew right from wrong when he murdered my son. ...” Sullivan said. “I’m not sure that justice was served if only one person voted ‘no.’”

Opponents, however, connected the issue to the death penalty overall, suggesting that it is “shameful” that the state still maintains capital punishment.

“The bill is trying to make it easier for a capital sentence to be imposed and is willing to trample the conscience of ordinary citizens to do so,” said Peter Severson, director of Lutheran Advocacy Ministry-Colorado, which has a church in Durango.

For Roberts, the issue had nothing to do with the death sentence itself. It had to do with holding the punishment to a higher standard.

“I too was dumbfounded by the results in the Holmes trial,” Roberts explained in offering her vote. “That said, even as difficult and confounding as some of these individual case results may be, I believe that we have to meet the highest procedural threshold before we impose the death sentence.”

pmarcus@durangoherald.com



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