COLORADO: SUSPEND DEATH PENALTY OR SOLVE COLD CASE CRIMES?

Nathan Dunlap, on Colorado's death row, for killing four people at a Chuck E Cheese Restaurant in 1993

Colorado May End Death Penalty to Focus on Cold Cases
Sunday, May 03, 2009

DENVER — Colorado and nine other states considered abolishing the death penalty this year to save money, but Colorado's proposal has a twist: It would use the savings to investigate about 1,400 unsolved slayings.

The measure has sparked a fierce debate between prosecutors and some victims' families. Prosecutors want to keep capital punishment as an option for heinous crimes, and they say the bill has raised unrealistic hopes about solving cold cases.

Supporters of the bill say it's more important to find and prosecute killers still on the loose than to execute the ones already tried and convicted.

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Proponents of the bill, led by Evergreen-based Families of Homicide Victims and Missing Persons, say Colorado's death penalty is so rarely used that it's not a deterrent. The group says hundreds of thousands of dollars are wasted trying to put people to death when hundreds of murderers are free.

Suthers and other prosecutors say additional DNA testing, including a proposal pending in the Legislature to take samples at the time of a felony arrest, could do more than expanding the state's cold case unit to solve old cases.

Colorado has executed only one person in the past 42 years, Gary Lee Davis, put to death in 1997 for his conviction in a 1986 slaying.

Two men remain on Colorado's death row. Sir Mario Owens was convicted last year of killing Javad Marshall-Fields, a potential witness in a murder trial, and Vivian Wolfe, Marshall-Fields' fiancee. Nathan Dunlap was convicted in 1996 of murder, attempted murder and other charges for killing four people and wounding a fifth at a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant in Aurora in December 1993.

WHAT WILL COLORADO DECIDE ON THE DEATH PENALTY?
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