HUGO, Colo.—Jurors rejected prosecutors’ requests to have a state prison inmate be put to death and instead sentenced him to life in prison in the slaying of another inmate who had been labeled a snitch.
David Bueno, 44, was convicted April 9 of stabbing Jeffrey Heird 29 times and beating him severely because he was suspected of not warning other inmates that a drug bust was coming.
After days of hearings in the penalty phase, it took jurors about two hours to return their decision, said Robert McCallum of the State Court Administrator’s office.
Bueno’s attorneys had argued that he was set up by other inmates and said the case against him was based on unreliable witnesses and scant physical evidence.
Prosecutors relied heavily on the testimony of other inmates.
Heird, 40, was killed in the Limon Correctional Facility in 2004. He had been convicted in Utah of kidnapping and killing a Cortez, Colo., gas station attendant in 1991.
Bueno was serving a 24-year sentence for burglary when Heird was killed.
An after business hours message left for 18th Judicial District spokeswoman Kathleen Walsh, spokeswoman for District Attorney Carol Chambers whose office prosecuted the case, was not immediately returned.
The last execution in Colorado was in 1997, when 53-year-old Gary Lee Davis was put to death for his conviction in a 1986 slaying.
Bueno was also convicted of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder but was acquitted of one count of solicitation to commit murder. Inmate Alejandro Perez is also charged with first-degree murder and faces the death penalty if convicted. He will be tried later.
Prosecutors said a third inmate, 34-year-old Michael Ramirez, acted as a lookout during the slaying. He too faces a murder charge.
Chambers planned to have her office prosecute Perez, but Lincoln County District Judge Stanley A. Brinkley earlier this month removed Chambers from the Perez case, saying Perez could not get a fair trial unless a special prosecutor is appointed.
Brinkley’s order focused on the role of two former defense attorneys who worked on the Heird case and whether the prosecution properly billed the Department of Corrections for its costs.
One attorney working with Chambers represented Perez in the second-degree murder case that got him sent to prison. Another attorney was one of the first investigators at the Heird slaying scene.
Chambers has said she plans to appeal.
