Abe Bonowitz reports that the Colorado Senate is due to take up HB 1274, which would repeal the state's death penalty and dedicate cost savings to fund homicide cold cases, in less than an hour -- at 2:30 pm, MDT.
The Senate webcast is here; today's Senate Calendar, here.
"Colo. lawmakers race to wrap up business for year," is an AP brief, via KRDO-TV.
Colorado lawmakers are racing to wrap up business for this year's legislative session.
The session must end by midnight Wednesday, although House Speaker Terrance Carroll says he plans to adjourn a day early.
Among the issues lawmakers must still decide is whether to abolish the death penalty in Colorado.
"Colo. may end death penalty to focus on cold cases," is an AP report by P. Solomon Banda, via Google News.
The measure has sparked 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 convicted.
"The death penalty is not relevant without a murderer brought to trial," said Laurie Wiedeman, the older sister of 17-year-old Gay Lynn Dixon, whose 1982 slaying remains unsolved. "I would like to see the person who killed my sister put to death. But to have that person free to run around and committing other crimes?"
Abolishing Colorado's death penalty would save an estimated $1 million a year that now is spent on prosecutors' time, public defenders' fees and appeals, according to a legislative analysis.
Supporters of the death penalty repeal measure want that money diverted to the Colorado Bureau of Investigations cold case unit, which has just one staffer. The extra money could add eight people to the unit, the legislative analysis said.
Proponents, led by Evergreen-based Families of Homicide Victims and Missing Persons, also say Colorado's death penalty is so rarely used that it's not a deterrent.
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 are currently on the state's death row.
The Colorado House narrowly passed the measure in late April, and the Senate is expected to vote before the session ends Wednesday.
Gov. Bill Ritter hasn't publicly said whether he would sign the bill if it passes. Before becoming governor, Ritter was Denver's district attorney and unsuccessfully sought capital punishment seven times. Before becoming district attorney in 1993, Ritter had expressed personal doubts about capital punishment.
And:
New Mexico this year became the second state to abolish the death penalty since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed states to reinstate capital punishment in 1976. New Jersey abolished the death penalty in 2007.
Connecticut, Illinois, Kansas, Maryland, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire and Texas considered abolishing the death penalty, but bills in those states have stalled, said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington.
"It (budgetary concerns) was a prominent issue and an impetus for these bills getting hearings this year," Dieter said.
Saturday's Denver Post carried the editorial, "Ritter needs to speak up on death penalty."
House Bill 1274 would lift the ultimate sentence and shift funding to investigate unsolved, or "cold case," crimes.
It passed in the House by a single vote. It won approval by the Senate Appropriations Committee on Friday and it's now on its way to the full Senate.
There it could die, according to Post reporter John Ingold, who in our online editions Friday quoted Senate sponsor Morgan Carroll, D-Aurora, as saying she didn't know if she had the votes.
Ingold also reported that Ritter still hasn't made clear whether he would sign HB 1274, should it manage to pass.
We hope that he would, and urge the Senate to send it to his desk.
Earlier coverage from Colorado begins with this post.
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