[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----COLO., CALIF., WASH., USA

[Rick Halperin]

March 21



COLORADO:

Lawmakers in Colorado Should Abolish the Death Penalty



In July 2012, Coloradans were devastated by the now-infamous murder of 12 
moviegoers in the town of Aurora. Despite the trauma and grief that crime 
caused, a local jury 3 years later refused the prosecutor’s request to impose 
the death sentence against the convicted perpetrator. At the time, The Denver 
Post observed, “The death penalty in Colorado has effectively expired. And it 
didn’t happen because of bleeding-heart lawmakers or activist judges. It 
happened because juries themselves wanted no part of it.”

Coloradans turned their back on the death penalty in one of the state’s darkest 
hours this century. They were right to do so. Now, with a new bill, the state 
has the chance to abolish the practice once and for all.

The problems with the death penalty are well known and damning. The practice is 
irreparably biased; it delays justice for victims’ families and draws out their 
suffering; and it devours millions of law enforcement dollars that would be 
better invested where they could actually protect the public — which the death 
penalty does not. The death penalty is so broken that even law enforcement 
officials have little faith in it.

Police chiefs rank the death penalty last among effective ways to reduce 
violent crime. And the data supports this belief. Between 2000 and 2010, the 
murder rate in states with capital punishment was 25-46 percent higher than in 
states without it. The death penalty does not protect or save lives — it only 
takes them. And Coloradans are paying dearly in time and money, to say nothing 
of morality, for this ineffective system.

A death penalty trial costs Colorado taxpayers about 15 times the amount of a 
life-without-parole trial, and it requires over 6 times more days in court. 
Colorado could save $1.5 million a year by eliminating the death penalty. These 
monies can and should instead be dedicated to addressing the 1,200 unsolved 
murder cases in Colorado.

As Gail LaSuer, a Coloradan whose daughter was murdered, explained, “I would 
rather have a larger number of people caught than to have a few executed.”

More important than its cost, the death penalty is profoundly unfair. It is 
applied randomly and discriminatorily, and it is imposed disproportionately 
upon people of color convicted of murder, people convicted of murdering a white 
victim, and people convicted in certain geographic regions of the state. For 
example, a person of color in the 18th Judicial District in Colorado is 14 
times more likely to face the death penalty than a white person in another 
district. A person’s race, the race of the murder victim, and where either 
lives should not be what decides who lives and who dies.

On top of this, our criminal justice system fails to protect the innocent from 
execution. Colorado executed Joe Arridy, who was proven innocent after 
execution and had spent the last seven years before his alleged crime in a 
mental institution. The state’s error meant a man lost his life for no reason. 
By retaining the death penalty in Colorado, we continue to risk that the 
government will execute an innocent person. That should be unacceptable to all 
Coloradans.

Extending these harms even further, the death penalty can be traumatic for 
correctional employees as well.

Colorado Warden Wayne Patterson was forced to pull the lever himself in an 
execution, although he opposes capital punishment. He described the experience 
as emotionally wrenching. Numerous wardens, executioners, and correctional 
officers suffer from PTSD as a result of their involvement with the death 
penalty.

Furthermore, American medical bodies consider participation in executions to be 
a breach of ethics. Because of this, prison officials must call on untrained 
executioners who often inflict unnecessary pain.

Since the introduction of lethal injection, over 7 % of executions have been 
botched, resulting in agonizing deaths. This is not surprising considering the 
drugs used in lethal injections have never been validated through medical 
testing for use in executions. An unlikely anti-death penalty movement has 
arisen in the corporate world as a result.

Unwilling to be complicit in this cruel, unjust system, two dozen companies 
have blocked the use of their drugs in lethal injections, including the only 
U.S.-manufactured drug used in Colorado executions. Drug companies manufacture 
their drugs, as Pfizer recently said, “to enhance and save the lives of the 
patients we serve. Consistent with these values, Pfizer strongly objects to the 
use of its products as lethal injections for capital punishment.” In response 
to action by drug companies, prisons have substituted untested drugs, passed or 
attempted to pass secrecy laws barring the public from knowing which drugs are 
used, and have asked compounding pharmacies for drugs to use in executions, 
although the pharmacies then have no oversight ensuring the efficacy of their 
products.

The fact that states are taking extreme and unethical steps to procure untested 
drugs to kill people is abhorrent. Taken with everything else we know about the 
practice, it is a clarion call for change. State-authorized killing is 
inconsistent with the fundamental values of our democratic system. It is often 
cruel and unusual in violation of our Constitution, and it can risk torture.

Colorado legislators must vote to end this broken system and stop it from 
corrupting the state’s criminal justice system even more than it already has.

(source: aclu.org)

******************

Vote on death penalty repeal on hold in Colorado Senate----Democrat expresses 
misgivings about the bill

An expected debate and vote on repealing the death penalty was delayed 
Wednesday in the Colorado Senate amid questions about whether it has the votes 
to pass.

Democrats have just a 2-vote majority in the Senate, and Aurora Democrat Nancy 
Todd, for one, hasn’t decided whether to vote for the repeal. She told The 
Denver Post she believes there are problems with the death penalty, but other 
factors give her pause.

“I’ve gone back and forth,” Todd said. “I’m a believer that it’s not a 
deterrent from keeping people from committing a crime. I believe the appeals 
process is extremely expensive and exorbitant. I also take into strong 
consideration my colleague, Rhonda Fields. And the fact that the three people 
sitting on death row — all happened in my district.”

Fields, whose son was killed by two of the men on death row, is a supporter of 
the death penalty, although her “no” vote on the bill would be canceled out by 
Henderson Republican Kevin Priola’s support for it.

Todd added that she felt the bill, like several others this session, has been 
rushed and is not a priority for voters.

“I would not say the repeal of the death penalty is or should be the top 
priority of this session,” she said. “It should not be what defines us.”

Todd’s concern about the speed of the legislative process echoes one of 
Republicans’ biggest complaints this session.

State Sen. Angela Williams, one of the bill’s sponsors said she understands her 
colleagues’ concerns.

“I’m slowing things down a bit to ensure my colleagues are comfortable before 
casting their vote to repeal the death penalty,” Williams, a Denver Democrat, 
said in a statement.

The debate has been tentatively rescheduled for April 1.

**********************

Who is on Colorado’s death row?

Three men await execution at the Colorado State Penitentiary while the state’s 
political figures debate the future of the death penalty in Colorado.

Nathan Dunlap

Dunlap, 44, was sentenced to death after he was convicted in 1993 of 8 counts 
of 1st-degree murder for shootings at a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant in Aurora. 
Dunlap was 19 when he gunned down employees, who were closing the business for 
the night.

His victims: Ben Grant, 17; Sylvia Crowell, 19; Colleen O’Connor, 17; and 
Margaret Kohlbert, 50, died in the shootings. Bobby Stephens survived his 
gunshot wounds.

His status: Gov. John Hickenlooper granted “temporary reprieve” to Dunlap in 
2013, meaning the execution most likely would not happen during Hickenlooper’s 
tenure. Hickenlooper completed his last term in January, and new Gov. Jared 
Polis has shown no intention of lifting the reprieve.

Robert K. Ray

Ray, 33, was the mastermind behind the 2005 execution of 2 people who were 
going to testify against him in another murder trial in Arapahoe County. Ray 
had fired shots during a 2004 party at Lowry Park where Gregory Vann, 20, was 
killed and Javad Marshall-Fields was wounded. Ray ordered the killing of 
Marshall-Fields and his fiancee, who were witnesses in the Lowry Park shooting.

His victims: Javad Marshall-Fields and Vivian Wolfe, both 22. They were 
engaged.

His status: His case is in the appeals process, which is mandated by Colorado 
law.

Sir Mario Owens

Owens, 34, was sentenced to death in the same case as Ray. He first was 
convicted of murder in 2007 in the death of Vann. The next year, he was 
convicted in the killings of Marshall-Fields and Wolfe, both 22, as they were 
driving on an Aurora street.

His victims: Javad Marshall-Fields and Vivian Wolfe.

(source for both: Denver Post)

***************

Colorado’s death penalty repeal in holding pattern----Vote margin appears close



Colorado’s Senate has for the second time this week postponed its floor debate 
on a bill to repeal the death penalty. The vote is rescheduled for April 1, 
after lawmakers iron out the state budget over the next 11 days.

Passage of the bill seemed certain in the Democratic-controlled legislature 
until the past week and a half, when a few Senate Democrats quietly signaled 
they may not be supporting it.

“It’s close, very close,” Sen. Angela Williams, D-Denver, told The Independent.

Williams and others working to abolish capital punishment cite, among other 
reasons, studies showing it doesn’t deter violent crime; the high cost of 
taxpayer-funded legal work, and racial inequities in how capital cases are 
prosecuted in Colorado. African-Americans make up 4 % of Colorado’s population, 
yet all three of the state’s death-row inmates are black. Supporters of the 
death penalty have argued this session that the question of repeal should be 
referred to voters. Gov. Jared Polis has said would sign a repeal bill and 
would commute the sentences of the 3 death row inmates to life in prison.

2 of the 3, Sir Mario Owens and Robert Ray, were convicted and sentenced to die 
for the 2005 murders of Javad Marshall Fields and his fiancée, Vivian Wolfe, 
days before Fields was scheduled to testify against Ray in connection with 
another murder case. Fields’ mother, Sen. Rhonda Fields, D-Aurora, is the most 
high-profile opponent of repeal and has been working with district attorneys in 
trying to persuade her state Senate colleagues to stand by her in that 
position.

Fields, who is African American, dismisses concerns that prosecutors in 
Colorado have disproportionately targeted black defendants with capital 
prosecution. She says there’s “nothing relevant” about the color of their skin.

“What those death row inmates have in common is that they’re all murderers. 
Race has nothing to do with this,” she told The Independent earlier this week.

The state Senate is the main hurdle for the repeal bill because the House has a 
wider margin of Democratic control and is considered more liberal.

Senate Democrats who support repeal have been especially quiet this week, 
declining to comment publicly as they seek to balance respect for Fields – 
their assistant majority leader – and her family with objections to what they 
say is an inhumane and outdated state law. Colorado hasn’t carried out a death 
sentence since the 1997 execution of convicted murderer Gary Davis by lethal 
injection.

Conspicuously silent, at least publicly, is Senate President Leroy Garcia, 
D-Pueblo, who notably didn’t sponsor the repeal bill and who has not made clear 
where he stands on the issue. Garcia hasn’t responded to our inquiries.

(source: The Colorado Independent))








CALIFORNIA:

Assemblymember Levine Introduces Constitutional Amendment to Abolish 
California’s Death Penalty



Assemblymember Marc Levine (D- Marin County) Wednesday led a statewide 
coalition of lawmakers in announcing the introduction of Assembly 
Constitutional Amendment (ACA) 12, to abolish the death penalty in California.

As introduced, ACA 12 would end California’s failed death penalty in 2020 by 
prohibiting a criminal sentence of death and require the re-sentencing of 
existing death penalty cases to a sentence of lifetime imprisonment without the 
possibility of parole. The constitutional amendment is co-authored by 23 
members of the Legislature.

California’s death row is the largest in the United States with 737 condemned 
prisoners. Since reinstatement of the death penalty in 1978, California has 
executed only 13 individuals, costing taxpayers over $5 billion, nearly 18 
times the cost of imprisoning a convicted person for life. African Americans 
and Latinos represent 67% of California’s death row population, leading 
criminal justice reform advocates to question whether race has been improperly 
factored into death penalty sentences. Along with DNA evidence that has proven 
the innocence of 150 death row inmates across the nation, there is growing 
consensus that the death penalty has failed to achieve its stated public safety 
goals and should be abolished.

“California’s death penalty is a failed relic of a failed criminal justice 
system,” said Assemblymember Levine. “The death penalty does not deter serious 
crime, has been overly applied to minorities and has proven to be an expensive 
and flawed exercise in justice. I am proud to stand with many of my legislative 
colleagues in calling for an end to the cruel, inhumane and ineffective death 
penalty. It is time for California to join a growing number of states and bring 
an end to the fatally flawed death penalty once and for all.”

“Governor Gavin Newsom’s executive action today imposing a moratorium on all 
state sanctioned executions is a bold, courageous and legally appropriate 
decision,” continued Assemblymember Levine. “While the governor’s action will 
temporarily halt executions in California, now is the time for the Legislature 
and the voters of the state to end the failed death penalty once and for all by 
supporting ACA 12. This is a conversation that must include all Californians.”

19 states have abolished the death penalty across the nation.

“Capital punishment is arbitrary, capricious, racist, and routed in systemic 
flaws,” said Jessica Jackson, National Director and Co-Founder of #cut50 and 
Mill Valley City Councilmember. “We know that people who receive a sentence of 
death by capital punishment are overwhelmingly black, brown, and poor — it 
epitomizes a 2-tiered system of justice in this country where the rich and 
powerful receive leniency while the lives of marginalized people are 
undervalued and disposable. Governor Newsom took an important 1st step by 
announcing a moratorium on the death penalty in California. I applaud 
Assemblymember Levine for taking this important next step to bring a 
constitutional amendment on the 2020 ballot to abolish this heinous and unjust 
practice. I am hopeful that the good people of California will be on the right 
side of history as we end this shameful practice in our state.”

If approved by a 2/3 vote of the Legislature, ACA 12 would require voter 
approval and appear on the November 2020 ballot.

(source: Pasadena Journal)

************************

Jury recommends death for Long Beach man in murder of Norma Lopez, 17



A Riverside County jury has recommended that a 42-year-old Long Beach man be 
sentenced to death for the 2010 murder of 17-year-old Norma Lopez.

Last week, after a 5-week trial, jurors convicted Jesse Perez Torres of 
1st-degree murder and a special circumstance attachment of murder during a 
kidnapping.

On July 20, 2010, Lopez went missing as she walked home from summer school in 
Moreno Valley. Her body was found in a dirt field 5 days later.

John Hall, a spokesman for the Riverside County District Attorney's Office, 
said the jury deliberated for about an hour Wednesday before notifying the 
judge they had reached a decision in the penalty phase of the trial.

A sentencing date has not yet been set.

The booking photo of Jesse Perez Torres, who was charged in the July 15, 2010 
kidnapping and murder of 17- year-old Norma Lopez in Moreno Valley. Hall said 
Torres' attorneys intend to introduce proof that he has an intellectual 
disability that disqualifies him from receiving the death penalty per a Supreme 
Court ruling that determined it would be inhumane to execute a person with this 
kind of disability.

During his closing arguments in the jury trial, Riverside County Deputy 
District Attorney Kevin Beecham told jurors: “The DNA is the most important 
evidence in this case. It is the most damning evidence we have.”

“He left his DNA all over her ... pants, purse, earring,” Beecham said. “It all 
points to the same person. It’s too coincidental to be a coincidence.”

When the incident occurred, Torres lived next door to Valley View High School, 
where Lopez had a morning biology class for the summer, Beecher said that 
Torres could have observed her leaving campus after the class.

Riverside County’s chief pathologist, Dr. Mark Fajardo, testified during trial 
that he could only speculate about how Lopez was killed, but suspected she had 
been strangled. Her body was found in an olive grove at the eastern edge of 
Moreno Valley, dressed only in jeans.

A security camera from a house near her school captured the last images of 
Lopez.

(source: Desert Sun)

*******************

Norma Lopez murder trial: Jury recommends death penalty in Moreno Valley case



A jury is recommending the death penalty for a 42-year-old man found guilty of 
1st-degree murder in the 2010 slaying of Moreno Valley teenager Norma Lopez.

The jury's decision for Jesse Torres was announced on Wednesday afternoon. Last 
week Torres was found guilty of 1st-degree murder with a special circumstance 
of murder during the commission of a kidnapping.

Lopez was walking home from summer classes at Valley View High School on July 
15, 2010 when she just disappeared. Her body was found 5 days in a field about 
3 miles away.

"The entire city was on edge because a child was kidnapped and murdered, and we 
didn't have answers," Bianco said.

The prosecution says DNA on one of her earrings led them to Torres, who lived 
near the route Lopez would take to walk home from school. The prosecution says 
Torres was "waiting, watching and lusting."

After finding him guilty, the jury had the option of execution or life in 
prison without the possibility of parole.

(source: KABC news)








WASHINGTON:

Washington can lead on ending death penalty. But it must take one more step.



California’s new governor channelled his inner Jay Inslee last week when he 
shut down the largest death row in America. Gavin Newsom called the death 
penalty “inconsistent with our bedrock values” and said it “strikes at the very 
heart of what it means to be a Californian.”

We’ll give Newsom credit for strong convictions, if not originality, and accept 
that the world seldom notices a West Coast social movement until it takes hold 
in California.

Leaders in our state have long known capital punishment is an inherently 
wasteful, erratic and morally fraught practice — and that it runs counter to 
what it means to be a Washingtonian.

Inslee set the tone in 2014, during his 1st term as governor, when he said no 
executions would proceed on his watch. The Washington Supreme Court was next to 
lay down a marker, unanimously ruling last fall that the death penalty is 
unconstitutional because it’s “arbitrary” and “racially biased.”

All that remains is for lawmakers in Olympia to pass a bill that wipes the 
death penalty from state statute and leaves nothing to chance.

The Senate has approved legislation that would make life imprisonment without 
possibility of parole the only option for prosecutors pursuing aggravated 
1st-degree murder charges. The House should now pick up Senate Bill 5339 and 
carry it to the finish line, before the 2019 session runs out.

Some argue legislative action is unnecessary because the death penalty is, for 
all practical purposes, dead in Washington. No executions have taken place here 
since 2010, and the decrees by Inslee and the Supreme Court ensure none will 
happen in the foreseeable future.

But the court left wiggle room for a future Legislature to try to enact a 
new-and-improved way to execute the worst of our state’s worst offenders — one 
that doesn’t place black defendants at more than quadruple the risk of being 
sentenced to death as their white counterparts.

If 50 years of failed fixes have taught us anything, it’s that the death 
penalty is beyond repair and lawmakers should abolish it once and for all.

In Walla Walla — home of the Washington State Penitentiary, where 8 men awaited 
death by lethal injection before last year’s court ruling, including three for 
murders in Pierce County — an in-depth report by the Union-Bulletin newspaper 
in 2009 pegged the cost of carrying out the death penalty over three decades at 
$20 million.

In that time, 5 men were executed, while countless family members were dragged 
through excruciatingly long appeals.

Life without parole is a more cost-efficient punishment, and is no less 
effective as a criminal deterrent — especially when you factor in the threat of 
solitary confinement for bad behavior that hangs over inmates’ heads.

Meanwhile, Washington residents grapple with uneven application of the law. 
Green River killer Gary Ridgway, convicted of slaying 49 young women, wasn’t 
sent to death row. Nor was Terapon Adhahn, who abducted and killed 12-year-old 
Zina Linnick in 2007, despite saying he’d prefer to die for his crimes against 
the Tacoma girl.

To those who fear ending the death penalty signifies Washington leaders are 
going soft on hardcore criminals, we beg to differ. A bill this year that 
would’ve given some inmates serving life sentences a shot at freedom never made 
it out committee. Washingtonians aren’t ready for that conversation.

But they’re more than ready to wash their hands of the state-sanctioned 
business of taking people’s lives.

The governor did it. So did the Supreme Court. Legislators should follow their 
lead, show our state speaks with one voice on this matter and make clear who 
the West Coast’s true progressive leader is when it comes to shedding an 
archaic apparatus of injustice.

(source: Tacoma News Tribune)








USA:

Hickenlooper on the death penalty: "I’m against it. It makes no sense."



Former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper said Wednesday that he is fully against 
the death penalty and would suspend it, if elected president.

“I’m against it,” Hickenlooper said.

“It makes no sense. It’s not a deterrent. It’s expensive. It prolongs misery. 
And the worst thing is it is depending on where that crime occurs, and in many 
cases, whether the killer is African-American or Latino, that has a lot to do 
with who gets tried on a death penalty charge. And the random injustice of that 
is something that this country should never stand for.”

CNN’s Dana Bash asked whether Hickenlooper would halt all of the federal 
executions as President.

“I have not looked at all the cases, but the vast majority of cases in the 
federal death penalty system, I’d have to be suspicious just to start,” he 
said. “So, I certainly would suspend the death penalty. ”

(source: CNN)

****************

Beto O’Rourke Supported The Death Penalty As Recently As 2 Years Ago----The 
former Texas congressman who’s running for president says he now opposes 
capital punishment.



Beto O’Rourke, a former Texas congressman and Senate candidate seeking the 
Democratic presidential nomination, said last week that as president he would 
suspend capital punishment at the federal level.

But as recently as May 2017, O’Rourke broke with the majority of his Democratic 
House colleagues to vote for a bill that expanded the federal “list of 
statutory aggravating factors in death penalty determinations” to include the 
murder or “targeting” of a law enforcement officer, firefighter or other first 
responder.

In effect, the bill, called The Thin Blue Line Act, proposed making it easier 
to execute a defendant if they attacked law enforcement. The legislation is one 
of a series of bills Republicans have introduced as a political indictment of 
the Black Lives Matter movement, which has sought to end unjustified police 
killings of black people.

The measure passed the House with 48 Democratic votes. Four Republicans voted 
against it.

The bill is far from becoming law. The Senate has not taken it up.

O’Rourke’s stance on the death penalty has evidently changed since 2017. In an 
interview with Iowa Radio on Thursday, O’Rourke said he was morally opposed to 
the death penalty and would suspend its use at the federal level as president.

“It’s not an equitable, fair, just system right now ? the guarantees and 
safeguards against wrongful prosecution, the disproportionate number of people 
of color who comprise our criminal justice system,” O’Rourke said. “And on 
moral grounds, I oppose the death penalty.”

O’Rourke has endured scrutiny from some progressives for his apparent shift 
toward more left-leaning economic views since his time on the El Paso City 
Council and over the course of three terms in the House.

But O’Rourke’s evolution on a matter like the death penalty is out of 
character. During his 1st House run in 2012, he challenged Rep. Silvestre Reyes 
(D-Texas) from the left on criminal justice, arguing for marijuana 
legalization. He even entertained full-scale drug decriminalization as a way of 
de-escalating violence at the U.S.-Mexico border.

The O’Rourke presidential campaign did not respond to requests for an 
explanation of how or why his views on the death penalty evolved in the past 2 
years.

Prominent national Democrats’ views on the death penalty have shifted abruptly 
to the left in recent years, reflecting growing efforts to expose inequities in 
the criminal justice system.

When California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) announced a moratorium on the death 
penalty in the Golden State on March 12, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), whose 
presidential bid Newsom has endorsed, quickly heralded the decision.

Other presidential contenders, including Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Cory 
Booker (D-N.J.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), have long opposed the death 
penalty as well.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), who like Harris, is a former prosecutor, opposes 
capital punishment, though she said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that 
she might consider it under extenuating circumstances, such as terrorism.

“I have talked about, when you have a terrorist, and it’s in a national 
security realm, looking at it differently,” Klobuchar said. “But overall, for 
the people that are in our jails right now, that are ? could be serving life 
without parole instead of the expense of having appeal after appeal after 
appeal, I would choose life without parole.”

(source: Huffington Post)