Former Pro-Death Penalty District Attorney Explains Why He Now Supports Abolition and Fears Political Promises to Expand Use of the Death Penalty

Former Denver Chief Deputy District Attorney Craig Silverman recent­ly wrote about why he changed his mind about sup­port­ing the death penal­ty and expressed new fears regard­ing its future use. His op-ed was pub­lished on August 29, 2023 in the Colorado Sun. Mr. Silverman writes that cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment was a promi­nent issue in his cam­paign for Denver District Attorney, and he him­self pros­e­cut­ed death penal­ty cas­es and pub­licly sup­port­ed its use. But he writes that he now has ​“new­found sup­port for abol­ish­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment” for rea­sons he char­ac­ter­izes as ​“per­son­al.” 

In 2015, Mr. Silverman advo­cat­ed for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the case of the Aurora movie the­ater shoot­er James Holmes, who was even­tu­al­ly sen­tenced to life in prison with­out parole. At the time, Mr. Silverman pre­dict­ed that ​“fail­ure to seek or obtain cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment for [Mr. Holmes] could kill Colorado’s death penal­ty.” In 2020, Colorado abol­ished the use death penalty.

Turning to his con­cerns about the politi­ciza­tion of the death penal­ty, Mr. Silverman explains that he fears the promis­es by some pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates to expand use of the death penal­ty for more than mur­der. Referencing for­mer President Donald Trump’s remarks regard­ing promised exe­cu­tions for drug-offens­es, Mr. Silverman says that ​“cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, on a mass scale, has been the revenge favored by tyrants through­out his­to­ry.” Other pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates have also invoked use of the death penal­ty. After the August 26, 2023, mass shoot­ing at a Dollar General in Jacksonville, Florida, for­mer Vice President Mike Pence called for an ​“expe­dit­ed due process of [the] fed­er­al death penal­ty.” According to VP Pence, ​“we’ve got to send a mes­sage to any­one that has evil in their hearts that there is no chance for them to spend the rest of their life behind bars, that they’re going to meet their fate in months, not years.” 

Mr. Silverman con­cludes by warn­ing that ​“author­i­tar­i­an­ism and pros­e­cu­tion are a terrible mix.”