Judge and Jury

With several controversial cases coming up, Colorado's death-penalty decision moves to a three-judge panel.

A A A Comments By Steve Jackson Thursday, Jun 14 2001

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"Apparently, judges are making the distinction between the crime and the defendant and the facts," legal analyst Andrew Cohen told the Denver Post. "If only one of every four is going to render a death verdict, it seems there are safeguards in place. Judges don't seem to be rushing defendants to death."

Angela Metzger didn't care about the legal arguments. "This doesn't lessen my pain, no," Brandy's mother said. "It would be nice if any of these sentencings and all these years -- even the death penalty -- would bring Brandy back, but that can't happen."

Michael Hogue

Robert Riggan was sentenced to life in prison for the kidnapping and murder of Anita Paley.

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She hadn't supported the death penalty before her daughter's murder, and she'd been ambivalent when the DA decided to pursue it for Danny Martinez and Francisco Martinez. She did not plan to attend the latter's execution. "It's nothing I want to see," she said. "It would not bring me any kind of satisfaction to see anyone else die. I'm not like that. I don't think we'd find any joy in watching a man die, even if he did kill my daughter."

So death row had a new tenant, and three more men faced death-penalty hearings in the coming months: Lucas Salmon, George Woldt and William Neal. In the four cases they'd considered so far, the panels of judges had acted much more like juries than anyone had predicted.

But in two of the upcoming cases, the panels would consider a type of testimony that no juries had ever heard. It was called a "proportionality review" and allowed the character and crimes of the defendant to be compared with the character and crimes of men already on death row. The proportionality review demanded a judgment call of where a particular killer fit on murderers' row -- above or below the death-penalty bar.

Read more Westword coverage of Colorado's death penalty in Penalty Zone