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Senators vote to keep executions
By Joe Hanel
Herald Denver Bureau
House Bill 1342 failed 18-17 in the Senate. Sen. Jim Isgar of Hesperus was among the four Democrats who voted no. All 14 Republicans also voted no.
The bill hit its first snag Monday, when senators amended out the death penalty and focused it solely on increased funding for unsolved homicides. Sponsors got the death-penalty repeal put back into the bill Wednesday morning, but they didn't have enough votes in the Senate to pass it.
It had passed the House by a similarly slim margin two weeks ago, when Rep. Ed Vigil, a San Luis Valley Democrat, provided the vote it needed to stay alive.
Senate Republicans argued that the ultimate penalty should remain an option.
"Yes, taking human life is an awesome decision," said Sen. Shawn Mitchell, R-Broomfield. "But for some crimes, which are different in nature from other crimes, it is the answer that justice cries out for."
Senate President Peter Groff pleaded with his fellow Democrats to make the difficult vote Monday, saying his own religious beliefs tell him that life is sacred from conception until whenever God decides it should end.
"This is our opportunity yet again to be the moral voice in this state," Groff said. "If this costs us the majority, then so be it. ... Because this is the right thing to do."
Groff is Colorado's only black state senator. He asked opponents of the bill to show him one death penalty case, other than a mass murder, where a white man faced capital punishment for killing a black or Hispanic man.
It was Groff's last major speech in the Legislature. He's headed to Washington, D.C., for a senior post in the Obama administration's Department of Education.
HB 1342 would have dedicated money from death-penalty defenses to a cold-case unit. Sponsors said the money would be better used in finding killers in the state's 1,400 unsolved homicides. That funding died along with the bill.
"We effectively don't have a death penalty in the state of Colorado," said the sponsor, Sen. Morgan Carroll, D-Aurora.
The state has executed just one inmate in 40 years. Gary Lee Davis died by lethal injection in 1997. Two men are on death row right now - Nathan Dunlap and Sir Mario Owens. Dunlap executed four people in an Aurora pizza parlor in 1993.
"Nathan Dunlap should not be able to be on the face of the Earth after that crime," said Sen. Ted Harvey, R-Highlands Ranch.
Despite the cold-case idea, Groff said the bill was really about a moral choice.
"We've put some nice garnish around it, but really what this is about is whether government should kill or not kill," Groff said.
Isgar voted against the death-penalty repeal in the Monday vote, as well. He said that while he personally doesn't like the death penalty, he thinks it should be up to the voters, who adopted the punishment by referendum in 1974.
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