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Jim Spehar
Colorado lawmakers have passed that troublesome state budget after much cussing and discussing. Now on to the more divisive stuff.
Like the 33-32 vote in the Colorado House of Representatives earlier this week to eliminate the death penalty. The drama of that close vote, which sends the bill to the Colorado Senate for another round of debate, played out for an extra minute or so. While there were really 32 other deciding votes, all eyes were on Rep. Ed Vigil, D-Fort Garland, until he finally broke the tie as colleagues waited silently.
Still unclear is what state senators will do. Only one Republican (that was maverick Don Marostica, not Laura Bradford or Steve King) joined all but six House Democrats in voting for repeal. If the GOP musters up that kind of party line stance in the Senate and there are a few “no” votes from Democrats, the legislation dies. Even if it passes, Governor Bill Ritter, a former Denver district attorney, hasn’t said what he’ll do if the legislation reaches his desk for signature.
Leave it to Marostica, a Joint Budget Committee member who consistently angers fellow GOP lawmakers and recently described most of them as “lemmings” following the conservative leanings of our own Sen. Josh Penry, to summon up a thought-provoking reason for his vote.
“I’m pro-life, and consequently I believe in the sanctity of all human life, and I mean all,” Marostica said. “So that’s why I voted for it.”
The death penalty bill is one of those pieces of legislation that invites political posturing. Right up front are the prosecutors, most of whom seem inclined to believe that their futures depend on appearing to be the toughest person ever to walk into a courtroom. That testosterone-laden attitude appears to grow exponentially with tenure in office.
Unlike Marostica, most “pro-life” politicians turn into “pro some lives but not all” politicos when a bill like this shows up. As do some lawmakers on the other side of the philosophical divide, those who can’t abide the death penalty but wouldn’t be caught dead supporting other “pro-life” legislation.
Somewhere in the middle are those who wonder why Colorado, a state that has executed only one prisoner in more than three decades, needs the death penalty. We’re not like Texas, which leads the 35 states still putting people to death, having executed four times as many convicts as any other state since 1976. (The number, in case you’re wondering, is 436, about 40 percent of the total executions nationwide in the past 33 years.)
We are very much like 17 of the 35 states with a death penalty where executions since 1976 number in single digits. One of those states, New Mexico, voted this year to abolish the death penalty. Like Colorado and four other states, it had only one execution in the past 33 years. Two states with the death penalty on the books didn’t have a single execution during that time. Only Virginia, with 103 executions, joined Texas in triple digits.
There’s the deterrent argument, which says the reason we haven’t executed more Colorado prisoners in the past third of a century is because those hard cases are fearful of paying the ultimate penalty. That’s a presumption hard to disprove in the abstract, kind of like saying there are no wolves in Colorado because the carnivores are fearful of ending up like the two who’ve been found dead. And there’s the apparent need for revenge, an argument usually expressed in terms of “justice” for victims.
For the primary sponsor of the 2009 legislation, House Majority Leader Paul Weissmann, there’s a practical reason for abolishing the death penalty. He’d like to take money used to maintain prisoners on death row, the dollars spent on higher stakes prosecutions and defending appeals, and instead fund efforts to crack some of the 1,000 homicides that have gone unsolved in Colorado during the same period when we’ve executed only one convict. Ones like the decades-old case of Grand Junction mom Linda Benson and her daughter Kelley where there’s finally been an arrest after 34 years.
When the pawing and snorting ends, Weissmann’s not likely to get his wish. I’ll be surprised if GOP senators don’t muster up along party lines and there aren’t just enough Democrats who break rank and vote against repeal. That’ll keep the decision off Gov. Ritter’s plate and leave law enforcement officers statewide scrambling for money to work their backlog of cold cases.
And it’ll also leave many future ideological hydrants to be marked by those on either side of the “pro some lives but not all” divide.
Jim Spehar is always intrigued by legislative machinations where ideology smacks up against political reality. Your thoughts are welcome at jimspehar@bresnan.net.
Like the 33-32 vote in the Colorado House of Representatives earlier this week to eliminate the death penalty. The drama of that close vote, which sends the bill to the Colorado Senate for another round of debate, played out for an extra minute or so. While there were really 32 other deciding votes, all eyes were on Rep. Ed Vigil, D-Fort Garland, until he finally broke the tie as colleagues waited silently.
Still unclear is what state senators will do. Only one Republican (that was maverick Don Marostica, not Laura Bradford or Steve King) joined all but six House Democrats in voting for repeal. If the GOP musters up that kind of party line stance in the Senate and there are a few “no” votes from Democrats, the legislation dies. Even if it passes, Governor Bill Ritter, a former Denver district attorney, hasn’t said what he’ll do if the legislation reaches his desk for signature.
Leave it to Marostica, a Joint Budget Committee member who consistently angers fellow GOP lawmakers and recently described most of them as “lemmings” following the conservative leanings of our own Sen. Josh Penry, to summon up a thought-provoking reason for his vote.
“I’m pro-life, and consequently I believe in the sanctity of all human life, and I mean all,” Marostica said. “So that’s why I voted for it.”
The death penalty bill is one of those pieces of legislation that invites political posturing. Right up front are the prosecutors, most of whom seem inclined to believe that their futures depend on appearing to be the toughest person ever to walk into a courtroom. That testosterone-laden attitude appears to grow exponentially with tenure in office.
Unlike Marostica, most “pro-life” politicians turn into “pro some lives but not all” politicos when a bill like this shows up. As do some lawmakers on the other side of the philosophical divide, those who can’t abide the death penalty but wouldn’t be caught dead supporting other “pro-life” legislation.
Somewhere in the middle are those who wonder why Colorado, a state that has executed only one prisoner in more than three decades, needs the death penalty. We’re not like Texas, which leads the 35 states still putting people to death, having executed four times as many convicts as any other state since 1976. (The number, in case you’re wondering, is 436, about 40 percent of the total executions nationwide in the past 33 years.)
We are very much like 17 of the 35 states with a death penalty where executions since 1976 number in single digits. One of those states, New Mexico, voted this year to abolish the death penalty. Like Colorado and four other states, it had only one execution in the past 33 years. Two states with the death penalty on the books didn’t have a single execution during that time. Only Virginia, with 103 executions, joined Texas in triple digits.
There’s the deterrent argument, which says the reason we haven’t executed more Colorado prisoners in the past third of a century is because those hard cases are fearful of paying the ultimate penalty. That’s a presumption hard to disprove in the abstract, kind of like saying there are no wolves in Colorado because the carnivores are fearful of ending up like the two who’ve been found dead. And there’s the apparent need for revenge, an argument usually expressed in terms of “justice” for victims.
For the primary sponsor of the 2009 legislation, House Majority Leader Paul Weissmann, there’s a practical reason for abolishing the death penalty. He’d like to take money used to maintain prisoners on death row, the dollars spent on higher stakes prosecutions and defending appeals, and instead fund efforts to crack some of the 1,000 homicides that have gone unsolved in Colorado during the same period when we’ve executed only one convict. Ones like the decades-old case of Grand Junction mom Linda Benson and her daughter Kelley where there’s finally been an arrest after 34 years.
When the pawing and snorting ends, Weissmann’s not likely to get his wish. I’ll be surprised if GOP senators don’t muster up along party lines and there aren’t just enough Democrats who break rank and vote against repeal. That’ll keep the decision off Gov. Ritter’s plate and leave law enforcement officers statewide scrambling for money to work their backlog of cold cases.
And it’ll also leave many future ideological hydrants to be marked by those on either side of the “pro some lives but not all” divide.
Jim Spehar is always intrigued by legislative machinations where ideology smacks up against political reality. Your thoughts are welcome at jimspehar@bresnan.net.
