The Colorado House Judiciary Committee recent­ly vot­ed to abol­ish the state’s death penal­ty, replac­ing it with a sen­tence of life-with­out-parole, and use the mon­ey cur­rent­ly spent on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment to help solve 1,200 cold-case homi­cides in the state. The 7 – 4 vote fol­lowed four hours of tes­ti­mo­ny from mur­der vic­tims’ fam­i­ly mem­bers, state law enforce­ment offi­cials, and death penal­ty experts, includ­ing DPIC Executive Director Richard Dieter. The bil­l’s spon­sor, Rep. Paul Weissmann (pic­tured), not­ed that dur­ing the past three decades, the state has spent an esti­mat­ed $40 mil­lion on the death penal­ty, has car­ried out one exe­cu­tion, and has two peo­ple on death row. ​“We in this state spend a lot of mon­ey on a death penal­ty that’s rarely used. [This bill would give] fam­i­lies an oppor­tu­ni­ty to have their cas­es solved,” Weissmann not­ed. The bill now moves to the House Appropriations Committee for con­sid­er­a­tion.
(Rocky Mountain News, February 8, 2007). See Recent Legislative Activities and Victims. Read Richard Dieter’s tes­ti­mo­ny.

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