DENVER-
The House Appropriations Committee approved a bill on Wednesday that would reduce the number of prosecutors working on death penalty cases and use the savings to solve old cases, including 1,200 unsolved homicides since 1970.
Rep. Paul Weissmann, D-Louisville, said the state could save millions of dollars yearly that is spent prosecuting and defending death penalty cases. He said the money could be better spent catching criminals still walking the streets.
Weissmann originally tried to abolish the death penalty but agreed to an amendment that would reduce the number of prosecutors to two in the attorney general’s office, equal to the number of convicted killers on Colorado’s death row.
The legislation (House Bill 1094) would use the savings to help finance the forensics unit, chemistry lab and a cold-case unit in the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. It would also allow local law enforcement agencies and relatives of victims to request help solving old cases.
The bill now goes to the full House for debate.
Attorney General John Suthers criticized the bill, saying it would cut his capital crimes unit in half.
He said over the past three years, the unit has helped local prosecutors with a number of cases, including a man convicted of killing his 11-week-old daughter and a prison guard.
“Opponents of the death penalty have been unsuccessful in their effort to abolish it, so they are now taking a back door approach. If Colorado has a death penalty, prosecutors need the resources to make it viable,” Suthers said.
