“Countries that give up the death penalty award an unimaginable advantage to the criminal over his victim, the advantage of life over death.”
The State of
Colorado plans to abolish the death penalty. We the comrades of Unit 1012: The
VFFDP, want you to remember the murder victims and hear from their families and
officials, who are against abolition of the death penalty.
Unit 1012: The VFFDP, wants the people to vote and not
the senators.
Colorado
lawmakers will consider whether to repeal the death penalty again, as factors
align for passage
The
Colorado legislature has debated getting rid of capital punishment four times
since 2000. The bill being brought this year wouldn’t send the question to
voters, as proponents of lethal injection want.
Published on
Mar 3, 2019 5:00AM MST Politics and Government
 |
From left: State Rep.
Tom Sullivan, a Centennial Democrat, and state Sen. Rhonda Fields, an Aurora
Democrat. Sullivan’s son, Alex, was murdered in the 2012 Aurora theater
shooting and Fields’ son, Javad, and his fiancee, Vivian Wolfe, were killed in
a 2005 shooting. Both Sullivan and Fields are against repealing the death
penalty. (Photos by Kathryn Scott, Special to The Colorado Sun)
|
“It is truly saved for the worst of the
worst kind of cases”
The 18th Judicial District is where all
three men on Colorado’s death row were sentenced to die by lethal injection.
It’s also where Holmes was prosecuted and a handful of other potential death
penalty cases were
heard in recent years.
Ask District Attorney George Brauchler,
a Republican whose term has been dominated
by his support for capital punishment, why he supports its use and he
produces a list of reasons. Among them: It saves taxpayers money because it
drives plea agreements in first-degree murder cases, helping victims avoid
reliving their experiences during grueling trials.
“That’s real
cost savings,” he said. “That’s real savings to victims.”
Brauchler is
also chief among those who think the issue should be sent to the ballot for
voters to decide. Anything less, he says, sends a message that Colorado
lawmakers don’t trust the people to decide. After all, they’ve been given tough
decisions before: marijuana, taxes, and oil and gas regulation
“Why
can they be trusted with all of these issues, none of which are more
complicated or more serious?” he said.
Brauchler
predicted if the repeal passes in the legislature, a ballot initiative will be
brought to reinstate it. That’s what happened in Nebraska, where the state
legislature abolished capital punishment in 2015 but voters brought
it back in a statewide vote the next year.
Recent
polling on capital punishment in Colorado is sparse. But in 2015, a Quinnipiac
University poll showed that 67 percent of the state’s voters thought the
death penalty should continue to be law, while 26 percent said it should be
abolished.
Colorado
voters rejected a
ballot measure to repeal the death penalty in 1966.
Jim Bullock,
the district attorney for several counties in southeast Colorado, agrees that
the people should make the determination. The Republican points out that
capital punishment is used sparingly in the state because of the strict rules
governing when it’s allowed.
In Colorado,
the death penalty can only be sought in a first-degree murder case against
someone who has killed in an “especially heinous, cruel, or depraved manner.”
The penalty also is available in cases where the victim is a police officer or
other first responder, a judge, an elected official or a witness to a crime. If
a defendant kills a pregnant woman, multiple people at once, or more than one
person in multiple criminal episodes they are also eligible for capital
punishment.
“It is truly
saved for the worst of the worst kind of cases,” Bullock said. “The morality
issue — that’s for each and every individual to determine. You cannot legislate
morality, it’s what the overall sense of justice is for all of the community
and all of the citizens.”
Bullock’s
office is pursuing a death penalty case against
Miguel Contreras-Perez, who is accused of killing Arkansas Valley Correctional
Facility corrections officer Mary Ricard in
2012. At the time of the attack, Contreras-Perez was serving 35 years to
life in prison for the kidnapping and rape of a teenage girl.
Cases like
that one are why Sen. Bob Gardner, a Colorado Springs Republican, has voted
again and again to keep the death penalty.
“I believe
that the death penalty is appropriate for the most heinous sorts of crimes, and
I believe it is a deterrent for certain types of crime when there is no other
deterrent, in particular those who are already incarcerated for lengthy
sentences really have no deterrent for committing a murder of a corrections
officer,” he said.
Gardner says
he has asked himself if a Colorado jury would ever sentence a defendant to
death given the number of recent cases where they’ve refused to do so. But
that’s not the point, he said, “the possibility of the death penalty is as
important as the imposition of the death penalty.”
“It was within the first month
that I was in the General Assembly that I debated this issue,” said Gardner, who first
became a state lawmaker in 2007 and is the top Republican on the Senate
Judiciary committee. “It’s 2019 and this issue is still
being debated. I think the debate is fair enough. We should always ask
ourselves as a society: Does it continue to be right? Does it continue to be appropriate?
For me, that answer will always be ‘yes.’”
 |
From left: Vivian Wolfe
and Javad Marshall Fields. (Provided by Sen. Rhonda Fields)
|
The parents at the legislature
In January,
Sen. Fields took to the podium on the Senate floor and began a speech that
immediately captured the attention of everyone in the room.
“Today
my heart is heavy,” she began. “On this day,
Jan. 29, 1983, I gave birth to my only son. He turns 36 years old in heaven. I
can tell you that living without him has been a very lonely journey. I can
still remember what it was like to carry him for nine months. I can remember
what it was like when I saw him and met him for the first time.”
Fields’ son,
Javad, was 22 when he and his fiancée, Vivian Wolfe, were gunned down on June
20, 2005, in Aurora. Javad was assisting police as a witness in the murder of
his best friend, who had been killed by Sir Mario Owens.
Owens later
opened fire on the couple, targeting Javad for his cooperation.
Since then,
Fields has entered politics and risen to a top position in the Colorado Senate
as Democrats’ assistant majority leader. She is against repealing the death
penalty and said she plans to be vocal about her opposition.
“It’s
going to be a difficult conversation, but it’s one that we have to have,”
she said. “I think that’s how we get at good public
policy, when we talk through it and we don’t push through it without having a full
debate. I’m looking forward to having that debate and that discussion on the
floor if it makes it that far. I’m not afraid of it. It’s not hurtful for me
because it’s something that we have to talk about. For me to shy away from it
or to shrink from it is just not something that I can do. I’m going to speaking
out and address the issue as it’s confronted to me with.”
Fields, who
is black, rejects arguments made against the death penalty on the basis of race
and cost.
“What
price do you put on justice?” she said. “What value do
you want to put on my son’s life and his fiancée life? I don’t know if there is
a price tag that you can put on justice. Justice is very expensive. I know how
much we spend down here on the Department of Corrections and our judicial
branch.”
 |
Rep. Tom Sullivan,
D-Centennial, speaks at a press conference announcing a “red flag” bill on Feb.
14, 2019 inside the state Capitol in Denver. (Eric Lubbers, The Colorado Sun)
|
She is joined
in her opposition by Sullivan, a fellow Democrat who is in the House. His son,
Alex, was murdered in the Aurora theater shooting. Sullivan spent roughly three
months watching the death penalty prosecution of his son’s killer unfold in an
Arapahoe County courtroom.
Sullivan says
he understands the problem with the death penalty, but still feels that “as a
society, we should be able to do that.” He says he would rather fix capital
punishment in Colorado this year rather than do away with it.
“I’m
not going to be counting votes against it. I’m not going to do that,”
he said. “I will tell my story and leave it at that.
But I have some very poignant stories to tell. I mean, it is very vivid in my
memory — several instances during that trial that I will relay to the people
that are sitting here that they have not heard from anyone else. And that they
wouldn’t hear from anybody else.”
One
conversation with prosecutors in particular stands out for Sullivan, the one
when he had to say aloud that he wanted them to seek the death penalty for the
gunman. He compared it to the questions flight attendants ask those who sit in
an exit row on an airplane about being willing to assist in an emergency.
Federal rules mandate that passengers have to verbally respond.
“The
only thing even comparable, that maybe you can understand, is if you get in
those three (exit) rows of seats in the middle of the airplane where you get
the extra legroom and they come and ask you those questions,”
Sullivan said. “When they look at you, you actually
have to say to them that you understand the questions that they asked. This was
exactly the same type of thing. You couldn’t nod your head, you couldn’t, you
know, mumble or just give them a head shake. No, you actually had to say the
words across from them. ‘Yes, I want that person put to death.’ ”
Staff writer
John Ingold contributed to this report.
INTERNET SOURCE: https://coloradosun.com/2019/03/03/colorado-death-penalty-repeal-effort/
………. https://www.facebook.com/VictimsFamiliesForTheDeathPenalty/posts/1957194297735860
Brauchler:
Coloradans should have the final say on the death penalty (and I’d hope they
keep it)
By GEORGE
BRAUCHLER |
March 1, 2019
at 12:04 pm
Our General
Assembly is poised to take away from Coloradans the decision about whether to
have a death penalty, citing lack of popular support, lack of deterrence,
excessive costs and even racism in its application. Each of these points is
easily refuted. There are good reasons to maintain capital punishment in our
state and even better reasons for Coloradans themselves to decide whether to
repeal it.
Anti-death
penalty activists regularly claim as justification for repeal that public sentiment
for capital punishment is waning. Colorado doesn’t need to rely on
outcome-driven polling or speculation to answer this question. We can rely on
the only poll that matters: the ballot.
In the many
decades since the U.S. Supreme Court declared the death penalty constitutional,
no state’s voters have repealed it. None. While several state courts and
legislatures have ended capital punishment, whenever and wherever voters are
permitted to vote on the death penalty, they vote to keep it. In some cases, they
vote to put it back into law after a legislature imposes its will over the
voters’.
In 2016, the
Nebraska legislature repealed the death penalty and then overrode the
governor’s veto of that repeal. Nebraskans overwhelmingly voted it back in the
next general election. That same year, there were two ballot measures in
California to repeal the death penalty and to speed up the appellate process
for death sentences. Californians — yes, Californians — voted to keep the death
penalty and to speed up the appellate process.
The stubborn
reality that the public still supports a death penalty is precisely why
anti-death penalty legislators and the governor will deny us the right to vote
on it. Even former Gov. John Hickenlooper, after suspending the death sentence
of mass murderer Nathan Dunlap, said that the repeal of the death penalty was
not a matter for the legislature, but for the people of Colorado.
Good idea.
Coloradans can be trusted to vote on important matters like taxes, term limits,
school funding, marijuana and the death penalty.
If the
legislature permits us to vote on the abolition of the death penalty, we can
have an honest debate about the facts and reasons for and against capital
punishment.
There have
been numerous studies with widely divergent and sometimes inconsistent findings
on the issue of deterrence. Recently, the National Research Council of the
National Academy of Sciences engaged in a comprehensive analysis of those many
studies and concluded: “claims that research demonstrates that capital
punishment decreases or increases the homicide rate by a specified amount or
has no effect on the homicide rate should not influence policy judgments about
capital punishment.”
And yet,
deterrence is only one of many purposes of sentencing. The paramount goal of
sentencing is the imposition of justice. Sometimes, justice is dismissing a
charge, granting a plea bargain, expunging a past conviction, seeking a prison
sentence, or — in a very few cases, for the worst of the worst murderers —
sometimes, justice is death.
A drug cartel
member who murders a rival cartel member faces life in prison without parole.
What if he
murders two, three, or 12 people? Or the victim is a child or multiple
children?
What if the
murder was preceded by torture or rape? How about a serial killer? Or a
terrorist who kills dozens, hundreds or thousands?
The repeal of
the death penalty treats all murders as the same. Once a person commits a single
act of murder, each additional murder is a freebie.
That is not
justice.
President
Barack Obama agrees. Although he has called the death penalty troubling, his
justice department sought capital punishment numerous times, including in the
cases of the Boston Marathon bomber and the murderer of nine in a Charleston
church.
A state
without a death penalty promises the evilest among us that “no matter what you
do to us, and no matter how many times you do it and to whom you do it, you
never have to worry about forfeiting your life.”
Anti-death
penalty activists also claim without reliable or logical support that capital
punishment costs too much. They object to my refusal to give the Aurora theater
mass murderer the sentence he found acceptable and they repeat the unproven
claim (the office of the public defender has never disclosed what it spent)
that the trial “cost $5 million.” They skip the fact that most of the money
spent by my office was to uphold the rights of the 1,158 victims.
Those who
suggest that the repeal of the death penalty would lead to significant savings
ignore common sense. If Colorado had no death penalty on July 20, 2012, does
anybody honestly believe that the mass murderer would have shown up in court to
plead guilty and go to prison for eternity? No. The same lengthy trial would
have occurred with all the same victims, witnesses and expenses.
In fact,
Colorado’s death penalty has led to some taxpayer savings. Just within the past
several years, two murder cases in Arapahoe saw the defendants plead guilty to
avoid capital punishment.
The claim by
some that Colorado’s capital punishment is motivated by race relies upon a
debunked 2012 study commissioned by criminal defense attorneys for a two-time
murderer trying to avoid the death penalty. The study has been rejected by
every Colorado court in which it has been offered. One court found the study
“flaw[ed]” and a “red herring.” Another, finding that the study used “a
substantially skewed database,” concluded “it is clear it was not an unbiased
study, but one designed to provide support for a particular position and
designed to reach an anticipated conclusion.”
Three men
currently occupy Colorado’s death row. In 1993, Nathan Dunlap tried to murder
five people at a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant and succeeded in killing four. One
teenage victim began to shake her head and pleaded with him “no.” Dunlap said
this made him angry. So, he shot her through the top of the head. In 2013, John
Hickenlooper intervened to derail the jury’s death sentence for this monster.
More than a
decade later, Sir Mario Owens and Robert Ray earned death sentences for
murdering Gregory Vann, and subsequently murdering the courageous eyewitness to
that killing, Javad Marshall-Fields, and his fiancé, Vivian Wolfe. It is a historical
anomaly that the only three remaining murderers on death row are Dunlap, Owens,
and Ray, all African-American men. In between Dunlap and Owens/Ray, Colorado
changed its death penalty sentencing from a jury to a three-judge panel.
Numerous other heinous murderers — white, Latino, Asian — faced death sentences
in jurisdictions throughout the state, including triple ax murderer Cody Neal
in Jefferson County and a killer of his 11-week-old daughter who then
bludgeoned a prison guard to death. The Supreme Court declared the panel
unconstitutional, automatically converting those sentences to life.
ICYMI: I
sought capital punishment for the Aurora theater mass murderer, a white man
from upper-middle-class California. A single juror kept him from death row.
If our
legislature repeals the death penalty, the death sentences for Dunlap, Owens,
and Ray will be converted to mere life sentences, either by Gov. Jared Polis or
by the Colorado Supreme Court. The same outcome has followed every legislative
repeal across the country.
If the repeal
of the death penalty is to be Colorado’s future, it should be Coloradans who
repeal it. The legislature should refer repeal to the ballot and trust
Coloradans to decide whether to treat all murderers the same or to maintain a tool
to distinguish the worst of the worst.
George H.
Brauchler is the district attorney for the 18th Judicial District, which
includes Arapahoe, Douglas, Elbert and Lincoln counties.
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