With the aid of volunteers, FOHVAMP created a statewide database of unsolved homicides; it turns out that three out of ten murders in Colorado are never prosecuted. The total number of unsolved killings in the state now stands at more than 1,500, by Morton's count, and is growing by 3 percent each year. His group pushed for a state team of specially trained investigators to tackle the backlog, but state officials claimed there was no money for such an undertaking ("A Cure for the Common Cold Case," February 14, 2008). Instead, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation managed to fund one position for a crime analyst to maintain an official database of cold cases.
That wasn't nearly enough for FOHVAMP. In 2009, the group backed a bill by Paul Weissmann, the House majority leader, that would have funded cold-case investigations by abolishing the death penalty. Colorado has executed only one person in the past four decades, and Weissmann argued that the millions of dollars a year the state spends on the seemingly endless appeals process could be better directed to putting more killers behind bars.
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Joe Cannata began aiding crime victims after he wasn't allowed to speak when the killer of his daughter Lynn was sentenced.
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Nancy Lewis is the executive director of COVA, the most influential victim advocacy group in the state.
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District attorneys denounced the bill, describing it as a divide-and-conquer strategy. COVA and the Department of Public Safety also opposed it, while Morton found himself in an odd alliance with the ACLU, the criminal defense bar and other so-called offender advocates in lobbying for it. But he insists FOHVAMP was simply interested in getting cold cases reopened, not the larger ideological debate involved.
"We're not one side or the other on the death penalty," he says. "We just don't have the investigators we need to address this problem."
The bill squeaked through the House and was narrowly defeated in the Senate. "It came within one vote of passing both houses," Morton sighs.
The defeat hasn't deterred FOHVAMP from keeping pressure on the unsolved-homicide issue. In 2010 a group of 26 law enforcement professionals — including a medical examiner, a crime lab specialist, several homicide detectives and an FBI behavioral analyst — began meeting quarterly on a voluntary basis to review cold cases statewide. When Morton learned that the group had cut its meetings from two days to one and had only reviewed five cases in a year, he urged his members to "ask the head of investigations for your loved one's case to present it to this team of experts." The review team has since seen its requests for review rise dramatically — again making the argument for a full-time squad of investigators.
Yet FOHVAMP's decision to break ranks from the "official" victim stance on the death penalty wasn't without some blowback. After the legislative brawl in 2009, Morton found the local VALE funds he relied on for some of his group's operating budget had been slashed. The VALE board in the Colorado Springs judicial district, which had provided FOHVAMP with up to $10,000 a year, refused to provide any additional funds for the next two years. Arapahoe County's board, which had provided $18,950 for four years running, trimmed its contribution to $10,000. Jefferson County, which had supplied $18,500 in the past, cut back to $10,000, then $8,000. And the Jeffco board specifically limited its contribution to Morton's $36,000 annual salary to $800, when it had previously paid $5,600 for that purpose.
"They just cut us off at the knees," Morton says.
One district's grant evaluator informed Morton by e-mail that her boardmembers "were not comfortable funding a significant portion of your salary because of the understanding that your activities as director of FOHVAMP involve lobbying, which grant funds cannot support." In response, Morton pointed out that all of his group's legislative lobbying on the death-penalty bill had been paid for by a foundation out of San Francisco.
"We did not use one dollar of VALE funds," he says. "We were legitimately doing what nonprofits do, and we were doing it with funds furnished by the Tides Foundation's death-penalty mobilization fund."
Maureen Cain believes that FOHVAMP was singled out for punishment because it had dared to take a public position contrary to that of the district attorneys and COVA. "Because they supported abolition, they became the stepchild of the victim groups," she says.
Morton is more diplomatic. "Perhaps there's some anger on the part of some VALE boardmembers that we're growing so fast," he suggests. "I think some people are getting embarrassed by the amount of unsolved homicides in Colorado."
The official victim lobby proved to be a formidable foe in another pitched battle this past legislative session, involving a cause dear to prison reformers: juveniles convicted of murder in adult court and sentenced to life without parole [LWOP]. As of 2009 Colorado had 48 such cases — more than Utah, Arizona and Wyoming combined, but considerably fewer than Pennsylvania (444) or Louisiana (335). In 2006 the state changed the mandatory sentence for juveniles facing life to allow for parole eligibility after serving forty years. The law wasn't retroactive, though, so it had no impact on the existing LWOP population.
For the past several years, juvenile-justice groups — notably the Denver-based Pendulum Foundation, which has been active in campaigning against LWOP measures nationwide — have urged lawmakers to consider extending a forty-year parole window for the current lifers, too. A 2011 House bill would have done just that, but prosecutors and COVA worked strenuously to defeat it. Lewis and others urged victims to "deluge" Crisanta Duran, a freshman state representative, with phone calls and e-mails opposing the bill. It died in committee 6-5, with Duran the swing vote.
