History of the Death Penalty

The first exe­cu­tion in Colorado was the hang­ing of John Stoefel in 1859. All exe­cu­tions were car­ried out by hang­ing until 1934, when the state adopt­ed lethal gas as its new exe­cu­tion method. Colorado switched to lethal injec­tion in 1988 before abol­ish­ing the death penal­ty in March 2020.

Famous Cases

Perhaps the most famous death penal­ty cas­es in Colorado are two that did not result in death sentences.

On August 7, 2015, after a more than six-month tri­al that cost Colorado tax­pay­ers more than $5 mil­lion, an Aurora, Colorado jury sen­tenced James Holmes to life in prison with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole for a 2012 movie the­ater shoot­ing that killed 12 peo­ple and injured dozens more. The jury said they could not reach a unan­i­mous deci­sion on Holmes’ sen­tence, an out­come that result­ed in a sen­tence of life with­out parole. Holmes had offered to plead guilty in exchange for a sen­tence of life with­out parole, but the pros­e­cu­tion reject­ed the plea. Holmes then plead­ed not gui­ty by rea­son of insan­i­ty. All of the men­tal health experts agreed that Holmes would not have com­mit­ted the killing but for his men­tal ill­ness, but dis­agreed on whether he could appre­ci­ate the crim­i­nal­i­ty of his con­duct. The jury reject­ed the insan­i­ty defense and con­vict­ed him of all charges, but spared him the death penal­ty. After the tri­al, jurors said that the pros­e­cu­tion had not per­suad­ed three of the jurors to impose death. 

Several months lat­er, a Denver jury returned a life sen­tence in the cap­i­tal tri­al of Dexter Lewis in the stab­bing deaths of 5 peo­ple in a Denver bar in 2012. After less than 3 hours of delib­er­a­tion, the jury deter­mined that the aggra­vat­ing fac­tors relat­ing to the killing did not out­weigh Lewis’ mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence detail­ing the exten­sive his­to­ry of abuse and neglect in his upbring­ing, includ­ing chron­ic alco­hol abuse by his moth­er while she was preg­nant and near­ly dai­ly beat­ings when he was a child. The defense also pre­sent­ed men­tal health evi­dence of the long-term effects of severe child abuse.

Notable Exonerations

On January 7, 2011, Colorado Governor Bill Ritter grant­ed a full and uncon­di­tion­al posthu­mous par­don to Joe Arridy, who had been con­vict­ed and exe­cut­ed as an accom­plice to a mur­der that occurred in 1936. The par­don came 72 years after Arridy’s exe­cu­tion and is the first such par­don in Colorado his­to­ry. A press release from the gov­er­nor’s office stat­ed, “[A]n over­whelm­ing body of evi­dence indi­cates the 23-year-old Arridy was inno­cent, includ­ing false and coerced con­fes­sions, the like­li­hood that Arridy was not in Pueblo at the time of the killing, and an admis­sion of guilt by some­one else.” The gov­er­nor also point­ed to Arridy’s intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ties. He had an IQ of 46 and func­tioned like a tod­dler. The gov­er­nor said, ​“Granting a posthu­mous par­don is an extra­or­di­nary rem­e­dy. But the trag­ic con­vic­tion of Mr. Arridy and his sub­se­quent exe­cu­tion on Jan. 6, 1939, mer­it such relief based on the great like­li­hood that Mr. Arridy was, in fact, inno­cent of the crime for which he was exe­cut­ed, and his severe men­tal dis­abil­i­ty at the time of his tri­al and exe­cu­tion. Pardoning Mr. Arridy can­not undo this trag­ic event in Colorado his­to­ry. It is in the inter­ests of jus­tice and sim­ple decen­cy, how­ev­er, to restore his good name.”

Notable Clemencies

On March 23, 2020 — the same day that he signed the death-penal­ty repeal bill into law — Governor Jared Polis com­mut­ed the sen­tences of the state’s three death-row pris­on­ers to life with­out pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole. Polis refused to iden­ti­fy the the pris­on­ers by name in the clemen­cy orders, refer­ring to them only by their Colorado Department of Corrections offend­er num­bers. He said his acts of clemen­cy were not based on human­i­tar­i­an con­cerns, but ​“to reflect what is now Colorado law.” The com­mu­ta­tions, he said, ​“are con­sis­tent with the abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty in the State of Colorado, and con­sis­tent with the recog­ni­tion that the death penal­ty can­not be, and nev­er has been, admin­is­tered equi­tably in the State of Colorado.”

All three pris­on­ers on Colorado’s death row were African Americans and all had attend­ed Aurora High School:

1) Nathan Dunlap was con­demned for shoot­ing and killing four peo­ple at a Chuck E. Cheese restau­rant. On May 22, 2013, Governor John Hickenlooper issued an Executive Order grant­i­ng an indef­i­nite stay of exe­cu­tion to Dunlap, who was fac­ing exe­cu­tion that August. The gov­er­nor’s state­ment accom­pa­ny­ing this reprieve said ​“If the State of Colorado is going to under­take the respon­si­bil­i­ty of exe­cut­ing a human being, the sys­tem must oper­ate flaw­less­ly. Colorado’s sys­tem for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is not flaw­less.” The gov­er­nor under­scored that his deci­sion to grant a reprieve — which has been con­strued as a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions in the state — was because of larg­er objec­tions to the death penal­ty, and that he was not grant­i­ng clemen­cy to Dunlap.

2) Sir Mario Owens was con­vict­ed and received a jury’s death deter­mi­na­tion in 2008 for the mur­der of a young cou­ple, Javad Marshall-Fields and his fiancee, Vivian Wolfe. The vic­tims were pros­e­cu­tion wit­ness­es in a mur­der tri­al involving Owens.

3) Robert Ray ordered the mur­ders com­mit­ted by Sir Mario Owens. The vic­tims, Javad Marshall-Fields and Vivian Wolfe, were wit­ness­es in his pend­ing murder trial.

Milestones in Abolition and Reinstatement

Colorado abol­ished the death penal­ty in 1897 and rein­stat­ed it in 1901. After the U.S. Supreme Court struck down exist­ing death penal­ty statutes in Furman v. Georgia in 1972, Colorado rein­tro­duced cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the state effec­tive January 1, 1975.

In 2009, the Colorado House of Representatives passed a death penal­ty abo­li­tion bill by a 33 – 32 vote. The bill failed in the state Senate by a 17 – 18 vote. The bill would have shift­ed death penal­ty pros­e­cu­tion funds to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation for the pur­pose of solv­ing cold cas­es. Officials esti­mat­ed that abol­ish­ing the death penal­ty would have saved the state approx­i­mate­ly $1 mil­lion a year. There were about 1,400 unsolved mur­der cas­es in Colorado at the time, but the Colorado Bureau of Investigations cold case unit has only one staff mem­ber. Proponents claimed that the $1 mil­lion could have added eight peo­ple to that unit.

In 2020, Colorado abol­ished the death penal­ty. The bill passed the Senate by a 19 – 13 vote on January 30, and the House by a 38 – 27 vote on February 26. Governor Jared Polis signed the bill into law on March 23, 2020 and com­mut­ed the sen­tences of the three pris­on­ers on the state’s death row.

Other Interesting Facts

The last per­son exe­cut­ed in the United States before the U.S. Supreme Court declared exist­ing death-penal­ty laws uncon­sti­tu­tion­al in Furman v. Georgia in 1972 was Luis José Monge, who was put to death in the gas cham­ber on June 2, 1967. It took more than ten-and-a-half years before anoth­er exe­cu­tion was car­ried out in the U.S., when Utah exe­cut­ed Gary Gilmore by fir­ing squad on January 17, 1977.

Between Colorado’s rein­state­ment of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in 1975 and its abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty in 2020, Colorado exe­cut­ed only one per­son, Gary Davis on October 22, 1997.

Until July 2011, the Colorado DOC had as a mat­ter of pol­i­cy auto­mat­i­cal­ly assigned death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers to admin­is­tra­tive seg­re­ga­tion, the high­est-secu­ri­ty clas­si­fi­ca­tion, which crit­ics refer to as soli­tary con­fine­ment. The DOC also required that death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers be assigned to the state’s ded­i­cat­ed ​“super­max” prison, Colorado State Penitentiary (CSP), in which all 734 pris­on­ers were iso­lat­ed, locked down 23 hours a day, and denied out­door exer­cise. At CSP, pris­on­ers’ only oppor­tu­ni­ty for out-of-cell recre­ation was one hour in a sep­a­rate con­crete-walled cell that con­tains a pull-up bar.

Prison offi­cials usu­al­ly main­tain that with good behav­ior, ​“super­max” pris­on­ers can earn their way to gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion facil­i­ties, where pris­on­ers can go out­doors and enjoy addi­tion­al priv­i­leges. Death-row pris­on­er Nathan Dunlap, how­ev­er, had not been con­fined to ​“super­max” because of any vio­lent or dis­rup­tive con­duct in prison and despite his good behav­ior in ​“super­max,” he was not eli­gi­ble to ​“earn” his way out.

Mr. Dunlap filed a law­suit and act­ed as his own attor­ney until ACLU took over the lawyer­ing in 2010 and reached a set­tle­ment with the DOC.

Under the terms of the set­tle­ment, Mr. Dunlap was moved from CSP to the Sterling Correctional Facility, where he remained in soli­tary con­fine­ment but was afford­ed the oppor­tu­ni­ty to exer­cise five days a week in an area open to the sky and ele­ments — an area twice as large as the exer­cise rooms he had used for 15 years at CSP. The DOC also chose to trans­fer the two oth­er Colorado death row inmates to the Sterling Correctional Facility.

For addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion, see M. Radelet, The History of the Death Penalty in Colorado, University Press of Colorado, January 2017; J. Ingold, A his­to­ry of the death penal­ty in Colorado, Denver Post blogs, The Rap Sheet (March 23, 2012).

Resources

• Department of Corrections
• Prosecutors
• Public defend­er’s office
• Victims’ ser­vices

Colorado Execution Totals Since 1976