Dead Reckoning

Dressed in black, she carried a vase filled with daisies, the photographs of Peyton, and a small urn. It seemed to take forever to reach the witness stand. And once she got there, she didn't sit down. Instead, Pat stood for more than two hours, fighting her way through tears to tell the judges about her daughter -- about Peyton's giving nature, her love and her dreams -- and how she now had to live with guilt and overwhelming grief. She had promised to keep her daughter safe. "I dream of Peyton dying, and I'm not able to save her," she said.

When at last she stepped down from the witness stand, Pat looked Donta Page in the eyes for the first time. Those are the eyes Peyton had to look into when she was begging for her life, she thought. The last eyes she saw as she lay dying. Pat looked hard and saw...nothing.

When it came time for Page to make the killer's traditional apology, Canney read it for him. The defense attorney truly believed that Peyton's murder wasn't the sort of calculated crime committed by others on death row. And so he read from the heart:

"To the Tuthill family, I am sorry. I'm sorry for your unmeasurable loss...As I see Ms. Tuthill's mother and how hurt she is, no words come. There are no words in this world that can express the amount of pain that has been brought to your lives, no words that can ever undo the past...I hope in time I can be forgiven by everyone. But I don't think I can ever forgive myself."

The apology was not accepted.

---

On March 2, the judges returned with their decision. They called Donta Page's crime "vile" and "repugnant" -- but they also spared his life.

All three had voted against the death penalty, although for different reasons. Judges Meyer and Anderson bought into the defense's proportionality review, or, as they wrote in their opinion, the "particularized circumstances of this case against the background of historical antecedents reflecting evolving standards of decency in the Colorado community."

They noted that historically, the death penalty had been "imposed with infrequency and reserved for the most extreme cases." In order to define "more precisely the context of community values in which this case has arisen, the sentencing panel has considered certain evidence as to the nature of this crime and this defendant in comparison to other crimes resulting in imposition of the death penalty in Colorado." And as a result of this review, they had determined that "imposing the death penalty on Donta Page would lower the bar for executions in the State of Colorado.

"This murder was preceded by no premeditation," they stated. Page had not pre-selected Peyton or waited for his victim. He "engaged in no preparation for or planning of the murder. Though he armed himself with a knife when he first entered the house, it was not at that time with the specific intent to commit a murder." And when he was "surprised" by Peyton's appearance, he "reacted instinctively," they wrote.

Page's actions, they said, "differed significantly from Frank Rodriguez's kidnapping of Lorraine Martelli; Robert Harlan's pursuit and abduction of Rhonda Maloney; Nathan Dunlap's revenge plan against his former co-employees at Chuck E Cheese's restaurant; Gary Davis' predatory pursuit and kidnapping of Virginia May; Francisco Martinez's torture and murder of Brandaline Duvall; George Woldt's stalking and kidnapping of Jacine Gielinski; and William Neal's calculating, ruthless planning and execution of Rebecca Holberton, Candace Walters and Angela Fite...None of these cases is characterized by the impetuous, precipitate and opportunistic manner in which Page attacked Tuthill."

This crime, they continued, was "further distinguishable from those crimes where the defendant engaged in purely gratuitous violence for the purpose of accomplishing the murder, and therefore not in the same category as Davis, Woldt, Martinez and Neal. "Although Page's sexual assault at knifepoint was "barbarous and brutal, the killing itself was not characterized by the demonical savagery of the latter cases....Though he is undoubtedly a violent man, his violence in this case was born of opportunism, rage and fear rather than blood-lust and sadism. This becomes more apparent when comparing his actions to those of Harlan, Rodriguez, Dunlap, Davis, Neal, Woldt, and Martinez.

"From the beginning, Rodriguez and his brother were looking for a victim to kidnap whom they decided to rape, torture, and murder. From the beginning, Dunlap wanted and planned pure revenge. From the beginning, Davis, Neal, and Woldt craved and calculated sexual thrills perversely heightened by torture and killing. Martinez participated in sexual depredations on Brandaline Duvall, but from the beginning to the end, he simply wanted to torture and kill. Harlan's lengthy homicidal pursuit of Rhonda Maloney was preceded by two hours of rape.