State Rep. Paul Weissmann, D-Louisville, is a reasonable man who has reopened debate on that most unreasonable of subjects, the death penalty.
Weissmann, a longtime foe of capital punishment, won a 7-4 approval in the House Judiciary Committee recently for a bill to abolish the death penalty in Colorado by convincing lawmakers that abolition would save the state money – which then could be used to pay for efforts to resolve “cold” cases.
Weissmann estimated the state would save an estimated $4.5 million on prosecution and defense attorney fees, mostly at local district attorney’s offices, by abolishing the death penalty. At the state level, he thinks ending the death penalty would free up $670,000 a year to fund a seven-member cold-case unit that would investigate unsolved murders, of which Colorado has stacked up 1,200 since 1970.
Many critics responded by saying Weissmann had two good ideas but they should be considered separately. As a supporter of the death penalty when fairly and judiciously applied, I’d say Weissmann has just one good idea: the cold-case unit. But you can’t pay for that by abolishing the death penalty because there is no evidence that such a move would save a dime.
It’s easy to tally the cost of prosecuting death penalty cases and handling the subsequent appeals. But Weissmann’s calculus makes no accounting of the offsetting savings when the death penalty – by its very existence – prompts savage killers to plead guilty in return for a life sentence.
Anybody who has ever watched “Law and Order” has seen Jack McCoy offer to “take the needle off the table” in return for a guilty plea. When such bargains happen in real life, they save the taxpayers millions that would otherwise be wasted in a trial and appeals. More important, guilty pleas spare surviving victims and their family members the anguish of a trial and the many years of appeals that follow a death penalty verdict in this state.
About 20 years ago, I served as foreman of the jury in a Denver death penalty case. After we deadlocked 8-4 over the sentence, murderer Timothy Vialpando received a total sentence of 200 years in prison without the possibility of parole.
Boulder District Attorney Alex Hunter then interviewed me in detail about our jury’s reasoning, because he was preparing to try quad- ruple murderer Michael Bell.
After I outlined Vialpando’s long history of mental illness, Hunter noted Bell had similar problems.
“If you could only get eight votes for the death penalty in Denver, I’ll never get 12 in Boulder,” Hunter concluded before offering Bell life without parole in return for a guilty plea. Bell accepted, avoiding a trial.
Television often makes these plea bargains look flip and cynical. Real-life prosecutors only do them after intensive discussions with victims’ families. Most often, the families conclude that the closure offered by a sure life sentence is better than the torture of trial and appeals.
I talked Wednesday to Weld County DA Kenneth Buck, who has twice accepted guilty pleas in return for life without parole. Like Hunter, Buck worked closely with victims’ families, outlining all the realities of our legal process and finally accepting their conclusion that a life sentence offered closure that a trial and endless appeals would not.
But the paradox about such guilty pleas is that only states that have a death penalty on the books can waive it to convince a vicious killer to accept a life sentence. Wisconsin had to take mass murderer Jeffrey Dahmer to trial to win a life sentence because it has no death penalty. Dahmer, with nothing to lose, fought all-out for acquittal – prolonging the agony of his victims’ families in the process.
The death penalty is thus to criminal law what the nuclear bomb is to national defense – a useful tool to have in your arsenal as long as you don’t actually have to use it.
Bob Ewegen (bewegen@denverpost.com) is deputy editorial page editor of The Denver Post.
