New Voices

On May 22, Governor John Hickenlooper of Colorado granted an indefinite stay of execution to Nathan Dunlap, who was facing execution in August. In his Executive Order, the governor expressed concerns about the state’s death penalty system, calling it flawed and inequitable. He also noted the national trend away from capital punishment, with five states recently voting to repeal the death penalty and other states rarely using it. Hickenlooper stated, “If the State of Colorado is going to undertake the responsibility of executing a human being, the system must operate flawlessly. Colorado’s system for capital punishment is not flawless.” The governor underscored that his decision to grant a reprieve in this case was because of larger objections to the death penalty, and he was not granting clemency to Dunlap. He concluded, “It is a legitimate question whether we as a state should be taking lives.”

At a recent event at Willamette University in Oregon, various state leaders in the fields of law and criminal justice spoke critically about the state's death penalty. Former Supreme Court Chief Justice Paul De Muniz (pictured) said the death penalty was "bad public policy," almost never resulting in an execution. He spoke of having defended a murderer sentenced to death in 1988. Twenty-five years later, the Justice noted, he is now retired after a full career in the law, while the inmate is still in the midst of his appeals on death row. Noting the $28 million spent annually on the death penalty, Justice De Muniz said, “The death penalty is getting a ‘pass’ from legislative scrutiny, when looking for ways to trim Oregon’s budget to fund starving schools and public safety.” The former Superintendent of the State Penitentiary, Frank Thompson, who presided over the last executions in the state, called the current system a “failed public policy.” Thompson said that he was concerned about his staff, who had the responsibility of carrying out executions, and about the risk that some innocent people have been executed in the U.S. Retired Supreme Court Justice Edwin Peterson also announced at the sold-out event that he would begin speaking out publicly against the state’s death penalty.

Colorado recently set an execution date in August for Nathan Dunlap, who has been convicted of multiple murders. This would be first execution in the state in 16 years. In an editorial, the Aurora Sentinel recommended that the governor spare his life, not because of doubts about his guilt, but because of doubts about other aspects of the process that led to his death sentence: "There is simply too much doubt about the effectiveness of the death penalty. There is too much doubt about whether Dunlap drew the sentence because of his race. There is too much doubt about whether Colorado residents have grown to see how barbaric and expensive it is. There is too much doubt about whether Dunlap’s circumstances, rather than his crimes, brought on a death sentence." The editors concluded an execution would be a step in the wrong direction for Colorado: "To move forward on this case with so much in doubt would only add another tragic crime to those that Dunlap has wrought upon all of us." Read the editorial below.

As a Superior Court judge in Delaware, Norman Barron was referred to as “the hanging judge” because of his willingness to impose death sentences. In a recent op-ed for Delaware Online, the now-retired judge expressed how his views on the death penalty have changed: “I believe the application of the death penalty is quirky and capricious… it is impossible to justify why some murderers receive the death penalty while others, whose crimes are arguably worse in degree or savagery, do not.” He also discussed the costs of imposing the death penalty, the risks of executing an innocent defendant, and its failure to provide timely closure to victims’ families as reasons for his current opposition to the death penalty. “In Delaware," he concluded, "if a convicted murderer in a capital case does not receive a death sentence, he receives an automatic sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole or any type of early release. Such a sentence ensures that the defendant is locked away in a state prison until he dies. There is nothing incompatible with this type of life sentence and being a law-and-order conservative on matters of crime and punishment, which I still consider myself to be. In this age of shrinking budgets and increased costs, the time has come, in my view, to adopt a more enlightened approach to criminal justice.” Read full op-ed below.