DENVER—Attorneys for condemned killer Nathan Dunlap are asking the Colorado Court of Appeals to provide details on how an execution would be carried out in Colorado and allow public input on the process.
According to the Denver Post ( ), Dunlap’s legal team contends that a Department of Corrections document spelling out details of how an inmate would be executed should be tossed out because it was compiled without public input.
Arguing on behalf of the state, Assistant Attorney General Chris Alber said procedures for lethal injection fall under the duties of the prisons director and don’t require public input. A Denver District Court judge concurred with that argument in an opinion last year.
During the April 1 argument before the appeals court, judges asked why execution procedures are, or are not, deserving of public input. A decision is expected soon.
Dunlap was convicted and sentenced to die for killing 17-year-olds Ben Grant and Colleen O’Connor, 19-year-old Sylvia Crowell and 50-year-old Margaret Kohlberg during a 1993 robbery of a Chuck E. Cheese’s restaurant in Aurora. He wounded another employee.
The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Dunlap’s appeal in February. Arapahoe District Judge William Sylvester set a May 1 hearing to designate a week in which Dunlap will be executed.
Under state law, the corrections department must carry out executions with “a lethal quantity of sodium thiopental or other equally or more effective substance sufficient to cause death.”
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Information from: The Denver Post,
