PERRY: Hickenlooper taps courage in deciding not to kill Dunlap back for his heinous crimes

It’s easy to kill someone. Ask Nathan Dunlap.

In fact, it’s so easy, that about 50 Americans murder one another every day. Another couple of million a year get sent home from the hospital because their would-be murderer didn’t score.

Not killing someone is much harder. That takes guts, discipline and a higher level of humanity than those who think killing is cool, fair or just the way of the world.

Gov. John Hickenlooper showed that higher level of courage last week when he put his own political future on the line and said that killing Aurora’s Chuck E. Cheese’s murderer Nathan Dunlap is wrong. He said that it was so wrong, that he would use his power as governor to stop it.

It was astounding. So was the response.

No one disputes that Dunlap deserves to die for what he did. The issue is whether we deserve to kill him back for his crimes.

Dunlap cruelly murdered kids. His crimes were revolting. He not only deserved to die, he earned the right to a slow, painful death. It doesn’t take courage to feel that way. It comes easily, naturally. You hurt me, I’m going to hurt you back.

That’s not valor or bravery. That’s five years old and aching.

Since killing Dunlap back won’t make Colorado any safer, since it won’t deter future crimes, since it won’t bring back the dead, it clearly becomes revenge killing. Revenge is the result of emotion; justice is the result of a process. Basing law on emotions that fuel revenge are the very foundation of places like Iran, China and Libya, which are among the few remaining places that kill people back for their crimes.

The United States is better than that. Colorado is better than that. Hickenlooper is better than that.

What the governor did wasn’t the easy thing; it was the hardest thing. He’s wagering his political career against doing the difficult thing. The right thing.

It would have been easy for him to throw up his hands and say that the people have spoken, and ask who he is to stand in their way.

He’s the governor. The state constitution gives him the power to stop executions for just this reason.

For his trouble, he allowed his political enemies to grandstand on his courage. There was no bravery in Republican Arapahoe County District Attorney George Brauchler seething into the TV cameras, demanding Hickenlooper kill Dunlap back for his crimes. It was an easy, over-emotional tantrum, repeated by Republican state Attorney General John Suthers and other wannabe gubernatorial candidates.

Critics struck like storms over Hickenlooper staying the execution, rather than commuting it. Don’t you get it? Colorado has flirted with ending the death penalty a handful of times in the past few years. It’s a very real likelihood that lawmakers or voters next year could end the death penalty in Colorado, just like they have in nine other states. What kind of a person would let an execution take place knowing that such punishment would become illegal in a matter of months? That’s sick. That cheapens human life in the same way that Dunlap did, and I would hope that we seek to rise above that.

Hickenlooper bravely pushed the problem into our faces. It’s an argument that indisputably shows how unfair, ineffective, impractical and outrageously expensive killing people back for their crimes really is.

Now, Colorado residents can and must take a hard look at our death penalty system, and consider that we were wrong. It won’t be easy. It’ll take great courage from all of us, not just Hickenlooper, to do the right thing.

Reach editor Dave Perry at 303-750-7555 or dperry@aurorasnetinel.com.