U.S. Senate
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(D) J. Hickenlooper*
(R) Somebody
80%
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(D) Phil Weiser
(D) Joe Neguse
(D) Michael Bennet
50%
50%
50%
Att. General
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(D) M. Dougherty
(D) Jena Griswold
(D) Brian Mason
60%↑
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Sec. of State
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(D) A. Gonzalez
(D) George Stern
(R) Sheri Davis
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40%
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State Treasurer
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(D) Brianna Titone
(R) Kevin Grantham
(D) Jerry DiTullio
60%↑
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CO-01 (Denver)
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(D) Diana DeGette*
(R) Somebody
90%
2%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
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(D) Joe Neguse*
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CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
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(R) Jeff Hurd*
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40%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
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(R) Lauren Boebert*
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90%
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CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
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(R) Jeff Crank*
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CO-06 (Aurora)
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(D) Jason Crow*
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(D) B. Pettersen*
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CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
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(R) Gabe Evans*
(D) Manny Rutinel
(D) Yadira Caraveo
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30%
State Senate Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
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20%
State House Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
February 24, 2009 06:39 PM UTC
29 Comments
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I fear the power of a state that claims the right to kill its own citizens.
The state has always claimed, and uncontroversially claims (without opposition even from the vast majority of death penalty opponents), the authority to kill its own citizens when extingencies on the ground require law enforcement to do so.
This is despite the fact that far less due process is involved. More people are killed under state authority this way than by all executions in the U.S. combined (on the order of three hundred people a year).
Many people wish police were more judicious in doing so (e.g. the man shot while already handcuffed by BART police not long ago), but even those people don’t dispute that at some times and places, states should kill their own citizens.
My comment was directed toward state sanctioned executions carrying out the death penalty. I have no problem with law enforcement or private citizens using lethal force when absolutely justified in self defense or to defend the lives of others. In fact I have had a concealed weapons permit for years for just that purpose.
it does make more sense to allocate resources to solving murders than to lengthy expensive pursuits of the death penalty.
Chandra Levy’s father made an interesting observation. He doesn’t want the death penalty for his child’s killer but not because of any turn the other cheek, forgive your enemy, the meek shall inherit the earth sort of reasons. That’s more a New Testament attitude. He just doesn’t think the guy would suffer long enough and prefers to see him suffer much longer and to the end of his days with life in prison.
However you look at it, no matter how much sense it makes from a purely practical point of view, western pols are very hesitant to appear soft on crime by opposing the death penalty and I also have trouble seeing Ritter signing it.
–The death penalty is a deterrent.
–Some crimes are so heinous that we just want the ultimate punishment. cf. Nathan Dunlap.
–I am concerned that if Ritter does sign an abolition bill, that we will have Constitutional Amendment on the ballot in 2010.
+We never carry it out anyway. cf. Nathan Dunlap.
+Horribly expensive relative to life without parole.
+One of these days it will be outlawed by the courts because it is Cruel and Unusual.
+Abolition gives us the high moral ground against the Saudi and Chinese governments.
the death penalty is a deterrent. On the other hand there is every reason to believe that many innocent people have been sent to their deaths over the years considering the number of death row prisoners who have been exonerated by modern access to DNA evidence.
It would be nice to be on the same page as the rest of the civilized world. Too bad we have to look to countries like Saudi Arabia and China to find fellowship concerning the death penalty.
We have already forfeited the credibility to pressure any other country on human rights since we are now just another nation that throws people into secret prisons with no access to due process and tortures confessions out of the innocent as well as the guilty with little concern for and no apologies to the former. The climb back to any moral high ground will be a long one.
“every reason to believe that many [emphasis added] innocent people have been sent to their deaths…”
Really? In Colorado?
We have only executed one person in the last 42 years and I am pretty sure he was guilty.
We have only executed 105 people since 1859. Source: http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.or…
I am not saying that some innocent men were executed, but I am saying that Colorado is not Illinois nor Texas.
executions in recent history where there was any question of guilt. Colorado’s existing, you can count them on your fingers, death row, all involve cases where the case for guilt of the crime of murder is very solid, and where the crimes involved would have qualified for the death penalty under the statutes of any jurisdiction that still retains the death penalty. Dunlap was a multiple murderer. Another was in prison for murder and killed a guard (in part for the purpose of getting the death penalty) and confessed on the spot. Sir Mario Owen killed a witness to a crime and an innnocent to prevent them from testifying in another criminal case.
Also, one of the men currently on Colorado’s death row, and the only other person Colorado has executed in the last 42 years were basically “death penalty volunteers.” They were/are engaging in a form of state assisted suicide.
One can quibble over whether those executed from 1859 to 1875, i.e. under territorial government, really count as Colorado executions, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if there were innocent people (and certainly people who aren’t death penalty culpable) sent to their deaths in Colorado among the 105. Justice was rough in the old days. For example, one of the men executed in Colorado had the IQ of an early elementary school kid and spent much of his last days playing with little toy trains almost oblivious to his fate.
Also, while not precisely executions, Colorado has had a surprisingly large number of lynchings for a non-Southern state in its history.
Per the book by Stephen Leonard.
to conflate legal state-sanctioned executions and illegal lynchings.
I would a lawyer to be more precise even if you do oppose the death penalty.
…some Justices of the Supreme Court have thought not. You know, cuz of that pesky Constitution and all.
I didn’t mean many in Colorado but many in general across the nation down through the years. It was a comment on the death penalty in general, not here in Colorado. You are quite right about Colorado. Texas would probably be another story. Wouldn’t be surprised if Bush, while Governor, didn’t cheerfully fry an innocent or two.
With the shootings, knifings etc. that maim and kill people every day in Colorado, it’s not likely that much crime is being deterred by our death penalty.
http://www.dpinfo.com/death_pe…
“Hey, Billy Bob, let’s go kill us some nigger or fags or cops. After you finish that case of beer, ole buddy.”
“I dunno Boogers. We do that shit and we’ll get exa…exa..exa…fuck, hanged or some shit.”
Booger slapping forehead: “Holy Budweiser, Billy Bob! Glad you thought of that. Man, we coulda done gone and done it. I’da never been able to drive my jacked up 1970 Blazer again!”
“Yeah, old buddy. What say we just go shoot some tin cans instead? I got some new ammo for my Uzi.”
Dave, do you REALLY think criminal minds think more that a few minutes into the future? Reality Alert: They don’t.
The states and the nations w/o the DP suffer no greater murder rates that those that do.
Deterrence is not a legitimate argument if you believe that punishment should be proportional to the crime. Suppose that A robs B and the sentence is 5 years. If you put A to death, then many people may be deterred from robbing other people. The deterrence argument is that: We should punish A more severely than normal in order to prevent C from possibly robbing D at some time in the future. Not a legitimate argument in my opinion in most cases. So in what exceptional cases would deterrence be legit? I can’t think of any except maybe some extreme national security situation. However, if you believe that death is an appropriate sentence for a given crime, then that is a legit argument (debatable, but legit).
and entirely separate from the fact that deterrence as an argument for the death penalty has been completely eliminated as a possible justification by the simply overwhelming preponderance of objective studies and analysis that show that it has no statistically observable effect on crime rates. Generally, informed people who argue for the death penalty try to avoid the word “deterrence”, because it only draws attention to the fact that their one argument that the death penalty has a positive impact on crime rates is utterly and completely wrong.
The more common argument these days is a thinly veiled emotional appeal; essentially the more polite equivalent of “I want to see that fucker hang!” This, as much as anything, puts me squarely on the side of those who oppose the death penalty.
But from a apolitical point of view, I think Ritter would be crazy to sign it until after his re-election.
I have no data just instinct that many Colorado voters would prefer to leave it as is. The cost savings argument is a winner, but only for those who really care enough about the numbers in the budget to know what those numbers are.
The state has the power to shoot people anyway. The Denver area gets 2-3 cases of death by cop with questonable circumstances every year, and the officers always go free.
Maybe that’s not so bad..I don’t know. I don’t know all the facts.
The difference between suburban life and life in West, North, East Denver and central Aurora, maybe parts of Montbello.. and the points is very large.
John Edwards said there are 2 societies.
The manifold diversity of street life and professional politicians amazes me.
My 19 year old nephew (actually my cousin’s boy….Cousin died at 32 from barbituate induced brain hemorrage) was murdered for just being loud and stupid while high on cocaine.
The ADA wanted to do just manslaughter……but Gov Ritter (DA Ritter) pushed murder 2. He got 30 years.
The guy will be out in about 10 more years with good time. He’ll be a felonious murderer with no job opportunites who graduated from criminal college and will have networked with La EME, or MS13, or the Texas Syndicate (he’s from Trinidad).
Maybe he’ll have changed. He’ll have to answer to G-d for his deeds.
Bill Winter does a great job in the DA’s office.
…by vetoing it, he’ll help himself. Won’t he?
Political expediency? Or to keep us as essentially the only Western democracy that has it on the books? Or so we can all git us a big ‘ol helpin of that steamin vengeance?
if the state executes Sir Mario Owens and Robert Ray and then does away with the death penalty.
Looks at most death penalty studies and statistics over a long range of time. They found that most of the “robust” statistical findings of death penalty effectiveness are not valid, and can find no evidence of the death penalty’s effectiveness.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/pa…
has this to say on the subject.
http://freakonomics.blogs.nyti…
If you read the fiscal note and the estimates of cost savings you will see that those dollar amounts are based on Alternative Defense Counsel (ADC) trying 2 death penalty cases a year in addition to 2 cases by the public defenders. The flaw is, Colorado doesn’t average 4 death penalty cases a year. The savings are over stated!
Bottom line for me, if you kill a cop, a judge, a prosecutor, a public defender, a witness in a case, or any other public servant for doing their duty, then you deserve the needle! We can argue deterence all day long, but how do you measure a negative. If it deters somebody from killing someone, how do you measure that, how do you document it? We are guessing, nothing more.
This became personal for me on August 27, 2008. When the Denver police solve the murder of my friend and neighbor Chief Deputy DA, Sean May, I want the person(s) responsible to face the possibility of death for their crime. We cannot stand for our society and our justice system to be intimidated or in any way influenced by this type of insidious conduct. Period!
these days (largely due to DA Carol Chambers), and the number of death penalty cases tried far exceeds the number were a death sentence is imposed.