[BoulderCouncilHotline] Proposal to Add Position to Policy Agenda Re: Abolishing Capital Punishment in Colorado

[Castillo, Carl]

Council Member Friend,

Below is proposed language to address the request you made, and that council supported, to add city support for abolishing capital punishment in Colorado to the city's Regional, State and Federal Policy Agenda. Please make any changes you deem necessary and reply to all on Hotline so that other council members may weigh in as necessary.
Abolish capital punishment in Colorado

The use of the death penalty is irreparably biased; it delays justice for victims' families and draws out their suffering; and it devours millions of law enforcement dollars that would be better invested where they could actually protect the public. A death penalty trial costs Colorado taxpayer about 15 times the amount of a life-without-parole trial, and it requires over six times more days in court. More important than its cost, the death penalty is profoundly unfair in that it is applied randomly and discriminatorily, and it is imposed disproportionately upon people of color convicted of murder, people convicted of murdering a white victim, and people convicted in certain geographic regions of the state. On top of this, our criminal justice system fails to protect the innocent from execution. By retaining the death penalty in Colorado, we continue to risk that the government will execute an innocent person.

Carl Castillo
Policy Advisor
[CMO_lockup_COBlogo]
O: # 303-441-3009
C: # 303-859-4504
castilloc at bouldercolorado.gov<mailto:castilloc at bouldercolorado.gov>

City Manager's Office
1777 Broadway | Boulder, CO 80302
https://bouldercolorado.gov/intergovernmental-affairs

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