Colorado Taxpayers Paid DA’s Office $1.6 Million for Unsuccessfully Pursuing Death Penalty Against Wishes of Victim’s Family

A more than $1.6 mil­lion price tag for pros­e­cut­ing a Colorado death-penal­ty case that the victim’s fam­i­ly opposed and that result­ed in a life sen­tence has caused some Coloradans to ques­tion whether cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tions are worth the cost. On August 14, 2019, Miguel Contreras-Perez (pic­tured) was sen­tenced to life in prison after he plead­ed guilty to the mur­der of a cor­rec­tion­al offi­cer and the attempt­ed mur­der of anoth­er offi­cer. The sen­tence came sev­en years after the mur­der and after Colorado reim­bursed local pros­e­cu­tors for legal costs in excess of $1.6 mil­lion accu­mu­lat­ed dur­ing the course of pros­e­cut­ing the case. 

James Bullock, District Attorney for Colorado’s 16^th Judicial District, sought the death penal­ty against Contreras-Perez for the mur­der of Colorado Department of Corrections Sergeant Mary Ricard at a state prison. When Bullock announced his inten­tion to seek the death penal­ty, Ricard’s fam­i­ly vocif­er­ous­ly object­ed. Ricard’s daugh­ter, Kate Smith, told reporters ​“I don’t agree with the death penal­ty. We’ve had many, many meet­ings with Mr. Bullock ask­ing him not to seek the death penalty.” 

State law allows Bullock’s office to bill the Department of Corrections for the cost of the pros­e­cu­tion, and a pub­lic records request revealed that the depart­ment paid the dis­trict attorney’s office $1.665 mil­lion between October 2012 and July 1, 2019. Defense billing records con­tain legal­ly priv­i­leged mate­r­i­al that exempt them from dis­clo­sure under Colorado’s pub­lic records law, so there is no esti­mate of the total cost of this case. However, stud­ies in juris­dic­tions across the coun­try have found that cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tions are much more expen­sive to defend and pros­e­cute than non-capital cases.

In a guest post for the Colorado Independent, civ­il rights lawyer Faisal Salahuddin not­ed that ​“Colorado impos­es the death penal­ty on few­er of its death-eli­gi­ble defen­dants than any oth­er state” and has exe­cut­ed just one per­son for the more than 8,100 mur­ders com­mit­ted in the state dur­ing the past half-cen­tu­ry. ​“While Mr. Bullock’s quixot­ic joust­ing in pur­suit of the death penal­ty might yield him some votes at elec­tion time,” Salahuddin wrote, ​“it will be all Coloradans – and not just tax­pay­ers in his judi­cial dis­trict – who will foot the bill. Money wast­ed in a futile endeav­or could have been spent on a vari­ety of ways to com­bat crime, and on reha­bil­i­ta­tive ser­vices and grief counseling.” 

Smith sum­ma­rized the impact of the failed cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tion on the Ricard fam­i­ly. ​“I am dis­gust­ed with the jus­tice sys­tem,” she said. ​“Colorado’s jus­tice sys­tem is nei­ther swift nor just.”