A statewide skirmish between Colorado district attorneys and state legislators over required changes in juvenile life-sentencing laws highlight the need for comprehensive sentencing reform in the state.
This week, state lawmakers overwhelmingly approved Senate Bill 181, addressing Colorado’s mandatory life sentence laws. Bipartisan support came from legislators in both houses intent on doing the right thing, as well as addressing a law the U.S. Supreme Court had deemed unconstitutional.
Although the state had already stopped juvenile mandatory non-parole sentencing back in 2006, the change naturally raised questions about 48 inmates previously sentenced to eventually someday die in prison for committing sometimes brutal or rampant crimes as minors.
That prompted a freakish revolt of mostly conservative district attorneys — filled with hyperbole, fear-mongering and borderline political extortion. Arapahoe County D.A. George Brachler jumped into the fear-mongering game fast and furiously, telling lawmakers and the public that the bill essentially handed the cell-door keys to heinous criminals locked away for monstrous crimes.
Chief among them is convicted murderer Austin Sigg. Sigg received a life sentence and an additional 86 years in prison for the heinous kidnapping and slaying of 10-year-old Jessica Ridgway in 2012. Critics of the bill implied or outright insisted that Sigg would be able to seek early release and be free to murder again, but that’s untrue. Sigg must serve the eight decades on top of his life sentence, making parole impossible.
What made this episode so unsettling is that a majority of district attorneys in Colorado see nothing wrong with automatically requiring the courts to send adolescent offenders to prison to die there.
Like most of the public, we understand that there has been and will always be a need to house some criminals for their entire lives to protect the public, even though such cases are extremely rare. But what these district attorneys really want are extreme, mandatory sentences that allow them to bargain with criminal suspects in an effort to get easier convictions and punish the guilty.
It’s morally corrupt to leverage someone’s life, even that of a criminal, to facilitate the state’s criminal justice system. Proponents of Colorado’s inane death penalty have frequently made the same argument, that the threat of the death penalty saves taxpayer time and money in getting bad guys behind bars.
The very foundation of our justice system demands that the merits of a criminal case are the sole basis for conviction and punishment.
Right now, Colorado prisons are packed with people sent there because of mental illness and drug addiction. The cost to taxpayers is outlandish, and the benefits — in rehabilitating convicts and reducing crime — are negligible. They certainly come nowhere near justifying the cost.
Of course there’s a righteous need to punish armed robbers, murderers, rapists and even thieves. There’s a sensible, genuine need to protect the public from determined and unrepentant criminals. But creating sentencing laws that don’t allow the courts to sort out what’s best in each case does nobody any good, except the offices of district attorneys. Automatically saying “never” precludes potentially better answers for everyone — including victims and their families — decades down the road.
This bill, which Gov. John Hickenlooper should certainly sign, is just a start in making Colorado sentencing laws moral and sensible. Lawmakers need to examine all sentencing requirements, especially those for drug sales and possession, and for those who obviously commit their crimes because of mental illness or substance abuse.
This controversy highlights our evolution in realizing that contrition, mercy and common sense are very real components of a criminal justice system that are vastly more beneficial to the public than giving revenge and bureaucracy leading roles.