[1] In March 2020, the Colorado Legislature passed a bill to repeal the death penalty for individuals for crimes committed after July 1, 2020.
[2][3] The law is not retroactive, including to the three inmates who were then housed on death row, but these sentences were commuted to life imprisonment by governor Jared Polis.
Another man, Stephen Morin, received a death sentence in Colorado, but was executed in Texas for separate murders.
Colorado was one of the first states to repudiate the death penalty by abolishing it in 1897 only to restore it once more in 1901 due to a number of lynchings that had occurred.
[6] On February 26, 2020, the Colorado House of Representatives voted 38-27 on final reading to pass it and send it to the Governor's desk.
In case of a hung jury during the penalty phase of the trial, a life sentence was issued, even if a single juror opposed death (there was no retrial).
On January 7, 2011, Colorado Governor Bill Ritter granted a full and unconditional posthumous pardon to Joe Arridy, who had been convicted and executed as an accomplice to a murder that occurred in 1936.
Hickenlooper granted Dunlap an indefinite reprieve, citing doubts about the fairness of Colorado's death penalty.
[15] Lethal injection was the only permitted method of execution in Colorado,[16] although the state previously used hanging and the gas chamber.