Debating the death penalty
Re: “The consequences of repealing the death penalty,” Feb. 9 opinion column
I have vacillated on my attitude on capital punishment over the years. I am morally hesitant in promoting a law that legalizes the taking of a human life. I’ve always considered someone who commits murder as somewhat mentally impaired. Also, I’m appalled at the time and cost, at taxpayers’ expense, of ongoing reviews, petitions and stays of execution for convicted murders.
However, George Brauchler’s commentary presented many noteworthy points for not repealing the death penalty. In my opinion, there are enough safeguards in the legal system to provide alternative sentencing for murder so that life without parole is possible. The idea that all murders are the same does not make sense, especially when evaluating the circumstances. The circumstances count, and that’s why the crime of murder is classified. Removing the ultimate penalty, I believe, would remove a significant deterrent for multiple murders. I say keep capital punishment and consider making such convictions non-commutable.
Richard Spaniardi, Englewood
The threat of the death penalty did not save my brother, Denver police Officer Bruce VanderJagt, from being murdered in 1997, nor will it deter other murderers. Such killers do not think about the death penalty when they commit their crimes. One year after Bruce’s death, I became active in opposing the death penalty, and I helped repeal Illinois’ death penalty in 2011.
The “claims of racial disparity, cost, and lack of deterrence” are anything but “tired and debunked,” as Brauchler states. They are proven realities and only some of many reasons why we should abolish the death penalty.
Sadly, some of the exonerated death row inmates I’ve met falsely confessed to murder when a prosecutor told them, “Just confess, and we’ll take the death penalty off the table.”
If Colorado repeals the death penalty, victims’ family members will not be forced to face decades of pain and misery. Ending the death penalty will help everyone, including taxpayers, those involved in the criminal justice system, and murder victims’ family members.
Gail VanderJagt Rice, Palos Heights, Ill.
An excellent column by Brauchler, who prosecuted the Aurora theater shooter. As Colorado’s former U.S. attorney, my experience was that the leverage a potential capital charge provides can prove very useful to solving crimes of unspeakable violence. I believe it is also warranted on the merits: The federal death penalty — and the state of Colorado’s — are certainly worth keeping.
There are some crimes so hideously threatening to our sense of civilization that the death penalty is warranted as a statement of our shared opprobrium. There are boundaries of social decency that no criminal should be permitted to cross, as in the William and Rudy Sablan murders we prosecuted more than a decade ago. The two Sablan cousins, already incarcerated in federal prison in Florence, methodically tortured their victim for hours and ate his internal organs. Or in Timothy McVeigh’s mass murder of innocents tried by Colorado’s late U.S. District Court Judge Richard Matsch for his domestic terrorism in Oklahoma City. Victims and our larger society need and deserve the repose that only the ultimate sanction offers in such extreme cases.
Troy A. Eid, Morrison
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