The first comprehensive study of the history of the death penalty in Colorado shows a longstanding unease with capital punishment and a general trend toward abolition, according to a University of Colorado at Boulder expert.
Since the 1859 hanging of John Stoefel from a cottonwood tree in Cherry Creek in the new settlement of Denver in the Kansas Territory, another 102 legally mandated executions were carried out through 2003, said sociology Professor Michael Radelet, one of the nation's leading experts on the death penalty.
But Colorado has executed only one person since 1972, briefly abolished the penalty between 1897 and 1901 and has taken steps to administer it in progressively more humane ways throughout its history, Radelet said. Results of the study will be published in the spring 2003 edition of the University of Colorado Law Review.
"We've always debated the death penalty in Colorado, and the general thrust of our history is in the direction of abolition," he said. "It's a very clear trend."
Radelet worked with about 50 undergraduate students to research the history of capital punishment in Colorado, documenting the types of offenses for which people in Colorado have been executed and the race and ethnic characteristics of the defendants and victims.
Compiling an accurate list was challenging, he said, because an official list of executions has never existed. Extensive research was conducted in the Colorado State Archives, Denver Public Library and CU-Boulder's Norlin Library, in addition to several other libraries throughout the state.
During the area's early history about 175 lynchings occurred. Five of these were found to be legal executions because they included quasi-legal proceedings in so-called "People's Courts," Radelet said.
Nearly one-quarter of those executed were members of racial or ethnic minorities, and the proportion increases to nearly one-third of all executions if eight Italian and Irish immigrants are included.
Only about 10 percent of those executed in Colorado were convicted of killing ethnic or racial minorities, the study found. The vast majority, or 89.2 percent, were convicted of killing white people.
It is highly probable that at least one innocent person was executed for murder in Colorado, according to Radelet, based on four cases involving questionable evidence.