BOOKS: ​“The History of the Death Penalty in Colorado”

When University of Colorado Boulder soci­ol­o­gy pro­fes­sor Michael Radelet began doing research on the death penal­ty in the 1970s, the not­ed death-penal­ty schol­ar tells Colorado Public Radio, he did­n’t have an opin­ion about cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and ​“did­n’t know any­thing about it.” After research­ing issues of race, inno­cence, and the death penal­ty, he came to have grave reservations. 

“I believe the death penal­ty is about mak­ing god-like deci­sions with­out god-like accu­ra­cy,” he told Colorado Matters inter­view­er Andrea Dukakis. 

Radelet’s lat­est book, The History of the Death Penalty in Colorado, chron­i­cles the his­toric use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in a state in which the prac­tice is cur­rent­ly under scrutiny. 

Proponents and oppo­nents of the death penal­ty both invoke ​“jus­tice” in sup­port of their posi­tions, Radelet told Colorado Matters. ​“There’s a debate about what ​‘jus­tice’ real­ly means,” he said, not­ing that Governor John Hickenlooper raised impor­tant ques­tions about the fair­ness and accu­ra­cy of the death penal­ty when he imposed a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions in Colorado in 2013. 

Commenting on the book, Hickenlooper said, ​“Professor Radelet reminds us we are not unique in ask­ing whether our ​‘exper­i­ment with the death penal­ty’ has worked: we have asked this ques­tion since our ter­ri­to­r­i­al days. The History of the Death Penalty is an insight­ful exam­i­na­tion of the death penal­ty and whether it has a place in our state.” 

Radelet’s book doc­u­ments each exe­cu­tion in the state since 1859 and explores the sys­temic con­cerns that have affect­ed its imple­men­ta­tion through­out Colorado’s his­to­ry. A Denver Post book review says: ​“In what could have been a dis­mal trea­tise, Radelet turns this fact-filled book into an absorb­ing his­to­ry of Colorado’s flir­ta­tion with legal killing.”