Colorado will become the 22e American state to officially abolish the death penalty. The local deputies adopted, Wednesday, February 26, by 38 votes against 27 a law which removes this provision from 1st July 2020.
The text was sent to the governor of the western American state, Democrat Jared Polis, who has already expressed his intention to ratify it and commute the sentence of three death row inmates awaiting execution. From 1st July, the most severe criminal sanction in Colorado will become life imprisonment with no possibility of remission.
Highly contested measure
The abolition of the death penalty has been hotly contested, including by the Republican opposition, and has been the subject of intense debate. Presumably running out of arguments, a Republican official, Steve Humphrey, had read the Bible for almost 45 minutes.
"I was impressed and moved by the testimonies and the debates that we heard", said the leader of the Democratic majority, Alec Garnett. "I have hope in a society where resources are spent on re-education, not on appeal; in the treatment of addictions, not in lethal injections ", he continued in a statement to local media.
Colorado's elected officials have repeatedly tried to abolish the death penalty since its recovery in 1979, but have so far been unsuccessful. The only death row inmate to have been executed in that state since that date was Gary Davis, convicted of rape and murder, who died in 1997.
"A phenomenal victory for justice"
The powerful American human rights organization ACLU welcomed this decision, described as "Phenomenal victory for justice", in a press release sent to Agence France-Presse. "The death penalty has no place in America. Nearly 50 years of death penalty statistics have shown that there is no way to execute people without race bias, without being arbitrary, costly and inhuman. "responded Cassandra Stubbs, head of the ACLU campaign against the death penalty.
"In addition, 167 innocent people have been officially laundered while awaiting execution since 1973. There is no excuse for a government that respects justice, equity and human dignity to continue executing its people ", she concludes.
Last year, 22 executions were recorded in the United States, concentrated in seven states, almost all located in the conservative and religious South of the country, in particular in Texas, where there were nine executions.
