University of Colorado at Boulder sociology Professor Michael Radelet isn't surprised the Colorado Legislature is considering abolishing the death penalty. It first did away with it in 1897.
Since the 1859 hanging of John Stoefel from a cottonwood tree in Cherry Creek in the new settlement of Denver in the Kansas Territory, another 102 legally mandated executions have been carried out through April 2009, said Radelet, one of the nation's leading experts on the death penalty.
However, Colorado abolished the penalty between 1897 and 1901, has executed only one person since 1972 and taken steps to administer it in progressively more humane ways throughout its history. In leading the first comprehensive study of the history of the death penalty in Colorado, Radelet found a longstanding unease with capital punishment and a general trend toward abolition.
"We've always debated the death penalty in Colorado, and the general thrust of our history is in the direction of abolition," he said. "It's a very clear trend."
Radelet worked with about 50 undergraduate students to research the history of capital punishment in Colorado, documenting the types of offenses for which people in Colorado have been executed and the race and ethnic characteristics of the defendants and victims. The study was published in the University of Colorado Law Review in 2003.
Compiling an accurate list was challenging, he said, because an official list of executions has never existed. Extensive research was conducted in the Colorado State Archives, Denver Public Library and CU-Boulder's Norlin Library, in addition to several other libraries throughout the state.
During the area's early history about 175 lynchings occurred. Five of these were found to be legal executions because they included quasi-legal proceedings in so-called "People's Courts," Radelet said.
Nearly one-quarter of those executed were members of racial or ethnic minorities and the proportion increases to nearly one-third of all executions if eight Italian and Irish immigrants are included.
Only about 10 percent of those executed in Colorado were convicted of killing ethnic or racial minorities, the study found. The vast majority, or 89.2 percent, were convicted of killing white people.
It is highly probable that at least one innocent person was executed for murder in Colorado, according to Radelet, based on four cases involving questionable evidence.
"The death penalty is more of a political phenomena than a criminal justice phenomena," he said. "It's always been a punishment used by politicians to show that they are tough on crime, but very rarely used and applied to less than 1 percent of all defendants convicted of murder in Colorado."
Colorado's distaste for capital punishment also is reflected in the way it has carried out executions, Radelet said. After the public hanging of Andrew Green on July 27, 1886, attracted a crowd in Denver of 15,000 to 20,000 viewers, the state outlawed public hangings in 1889.
The state also began using a hanging machine that didn't require a hangman. The device used the convicted man's own weight to trigger a system intended to break the man's neck more quickly and humanely by lifting him upwards rather than dropping him through a trap door on the gallows.
This led to the expression that an inmate was being "jerked to Jesus," Radelet said. Nonetheless, most inmates hanged by the machine still died from strangulation, not from broken necks.
In 1933, the state Senate, but not the House, voted to abolish the death penalty and subsequently the state moved executions from hanging to the gas chamber. More moves to abolish the penalty were made in the Legislature in 1955 and 1957, and in 1988, Colorado changed its method of execution from asphyxiation to lethal injection.
FACTS ABOUT THE DEATH PENALTY IN COLORADO
o Of Colorado's 103 executions, 102 took place prior to 1972.
o All persons executed in Colorado have been men, and all were executed for committing murder.
o Nearly one-quarter of those executed were members of racial or ethnic minorities, the proportion increases to nearly one-third of all executions if eight Italian and Irish immigrants are included.
o Only about 10 percent of those executed in Colorado were convicted of killing ethnic or racial minorities. The vast majority of those executed, or 89.2 percent, were convicted of killing white people.
o At least four mentally impaired inmates were among those executed.
o It is highly probable that at least one innocent person was executed for murder in Colorado, based on four cases involving questionable evidence.
o Seventy-eight of the 103 men executed were sentenced for killing one victim, including one for the murder of a Catholic priest during Sunday mass. Five were sentenced for killing four victims, three of whom were involved in the same 1928 Lamar bank robbery.
o John Gilbert Graham, convicted of blowing up an airplane in 1955 on which his mother was a passenger, killed 44. He was executed in 1957.
o On two occasions, the state executed three men on the same day, and on eight occasions the state executed two on the same day, including two brothers.
o The state's most controversial execution may have taken place in the 1930s when a mentally impaired inmate named Joe Arridy was executed for the rape and murder of a young Pueblo girl. He was convicted solely on the basis of his confession, and another man who had the murder weapon in his possession was executed for the same crime.
o The busiest decade for executions in Colorado was the 1930s with 25. More than 10 executions also occurred in the 1880s, 1890s and 1940s.
o The most executions in a single year was 1930 with 7.
o There were only 10 executions in the last half of the 20th century.
o The last person executed in Colorado was Gary Davis in 1997.
Source: "Capital Punishment in Colorado: 1859-1972," by CU-Boulder Professor Michael L. Radelet, University of Colorado Law Review, spring 2003.