Twenty years ago, frus­trat­ed by what they per­ceived to be the slow pace of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, Colorado leg­is­la­tors adopt­ed a law to fix” their death penal­ty by speed­ing up appeals. Proponents and oppo­nents of the state’s death penal­ty agree on one thing: the law has­n’t worked. As The Denver Post reports, the state law intend­ed to stream­line the death penal­ty appeals process by impos­ing a two-year dead­line for deci­sion and con­sol­i­dat­ing direct appeals and post-con­vic­tion appeals into a uni­tary” sys­tem of review has failed. Colorado’s two death row pris­on­ers affect­ed by the law have spent more than sev­en years at the first step in the appeals process, with no rul­ing on their cas­es in sight. The 1997 law changed the order of death penal­ty appeals, putting the length­i­er post-con­vic­tion appeal (involv­ing new evi­dence and claims of inef­fec­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tion or pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct) first, before the direct appeal (which involves only issues that were raised by defense coun­sel at the time of tri­al). Once the tri­al court rules on the post-con­vic­tion appeal, the Colorado Supreme Court would review and resolve both appeals togeth­er, in a sin­gle uni­tary” appeal pro­ceed­ing. But while the law orig­i­nal­ly allowed no exten­sions of time of any kind” in post-con­vic­tion appeals, a 2010 Colorado Supreme Court rul­ing allowed exten­sions to be grant­ed under extra­or­di­nary cir­cum­stances” nec­es­sary to pro­tect a defen­dan­t’s pro­ce­dur­al rights. Death row inmates Robert Ray and Sir Mario Owens both received exten­sions. Seven years lat­er, Owens’ case has had an exten­sive evi­den­tiary hear­ing, but the appeal may have to be redone because the state supreme court fired the judge pre­sid­ing over the case just before he was expect­ed to issue his rul­ing. Ray’s post-con­vic­tion hear­ings have not yet begun. Christopher Decker, a Denver defense attor­ney, voiced con­cerns about whether a fast appeals sys­tem would ade­quate­ly pro­tect defen­dants’ con­sti­tu­tion­al rights: If they just speed up the process and strip every­one of due process, we’ll have a very fast out­come that will be worth noth­ing. It won’t stand up to con­sti­tu­tion­al review.” Jeanne Adkins, the for­mer state rep­re­sen­ta­tive who spon­sored the 1997 bill to speed up appeals, said, I’m almost to the point where I would say, Let’s do away with it and save the tax­pay­ers the mon­ey.’ ” Expressing frus­tra­tion with the death penal­ty sys­tem, she says “[t]he death penal­ty has become so politi­cized, truth­ful­ly, in the last decade or so in Colorado that I real­ly think that a lot of what the leg­is­la­ture tried to do may actu­al­ly be pret­ty pointless now.” 

(J. Ingold, Colorado law to speed up death penal­ty is fail­ing, advo­cates on both sides say,” The Denver Post, July 25, 2016; J. Ingold, Lawyers for Colorado death row inmate called judge’s fir­ing lit­er­al­ly unprece­dent­ed”, The Denver Post, July 1, 2016.) See Costs and Recent Legislation.

Citation Guide