AURORA | Gov. John Hickenlooper drew sharp criticism Wednesday when spared Nathan Dunlap’s life for now, granting an indefinite delay to a man who killed four people at a children’s restaurant in 1993.
The decision is not outright clemency for Dunlap, just a “temporary reprieve” that indefinitely delays Dunlap’s execution, which had been set for August. Another governor could decide to lift the reprieve and allow Dunlap to be executed, but Hickenlooper said it is “highly unlikely” he will revisit Dunlap’s case.
Hickenlooper said when looked closely at the death penalty in Colorado, he found a system deeply flawed.
“The system should be flawless in every sense,” he said. With questions about whether the state could acquire the hard-to-get drugs needed for a lethal injection, and the fact that several equally heinous crimes did not result in a death sentence, Hickenlooper said they system isn’t the flawless one it needs to be.
The move enraged Arapahoe County prosecutors and Dunlap’s victims, who said the quadruple murderer deserved to die for his crimes.
In a fiery press conference after Hickenlooper’s announcement, Arapahoe County District Attorney George Brauchler said he was beyond disappointed.
“Disappointed isn’t strong enough,” he said. “This is a no brainer about what justice is.”
Brauchler said the only person smiling after Hickenlooper’s announcement is Dunlap.
“There is one person to thank for that smile,” he said.
The personal barbs were piled on across the state.
“We feel the governor has taken the cowardly way out,” said Marj Crowell, whose 19-year-old daughter, Sylvia Crowell, was killed. “They’re just hoping we’ll forget about this until we get the next governor.”
Hickenlooper is running for re-election next year, and Dunlap’s fate is certain to be a campaign issue. No prominent Republican has signed up to challenge him, but Wednesday’s decision prompted unusually personal criticism.
“Hickenlooper should’ve been up front with voters when he ran for office if he could not carry out the death penalty,” GOP Attorney General John Suthers said in a statement.
“He’s made himself into Nathan Dunlap’s guardian angel,” said Brauchler, the Republican district attorney in the office that prosecuted Dunlap. “He’s said, ‘As long as you keep me in office, Nathan Dunlap never has to face death.’”
“This is something we’ve seen consistently out of this governor,” said Rep. Mark Waller, R-Colorado Springs, minority leader in the state’s lower house. “‘I’m not going to make a decision.’”
Hickenlooper has an image as a pragmatic problem-solver, and he enjoyed bipartisan popularity until this year. But he has been forced to take a stand on an increasing number of divisive issues since his party won back the statehouse in November.
He signed sweeping gun control legislation and approved laws to help people who are in the country illegally and to establish civil unions for same-sex couples this year.
On the death penalty, Hickenlooper has appeared to be searching for a middle way.
In a December interview with The Associated Press, he said of repealing the death penalty: “I wrestle with this, right now, on a pretty much daily basis.”
Hickenlooper granted Dunlap a reprieve, not clemency. Clemency would have changed Dunlap’s sentence to life without parole.
Throughout his press conference Wednesday, Hickenlooper referred to Dunlap not by name, but by “Offender No. 89148,” Dunlap’s prison number.
The governor stressed that he didn’t grant the delay out of compassion for Dunlap, but out of concerns over the state’s death penalty system.
“It is a legitimate question whether we as a state should be taking lives,” the order says. “Because the question is about the use of the death penalty itself, and not about Offender No. 89148, I have opted to grant a reprieve and not clemency in this case.”
Dunlap killed four people — Ben Grant and Colleen O’Connor, both 17; Sylvia Crowell, 19; and Margaret Kohlberg, 50 — during a robbery at an Aurora Chuck E. Cheese restaurant on Dec. 14, 1993. He also wounded a fifth, 20-year-old Bobby Stephens.
Police said Dunlap, then 19 and a former employee of the restaurant, ate dinner there that night and hid in a bathroom until all the customers left. Then he shot the employees, stole money from a safe, a fees game tokens, then fled the scene.
The crime was part of a string of violent robberies and shootings Dunlap participated in during the fall and winter of 1993.
His lawyers have said Dunlap has bipolar disorder and was in the mist of his first manic episode during those months.
Police arrested Dunlap a short time after the crime.
The case finally went to trial in 1996 after a judge moved it from Arapahoe County, where news of Dunlap’s crime dominated the airwaves, to El Paso County. A jury there convicted Dunlap of all the charges and sentenced him to die.
Dunlap’s lawyers have since appealed the sentence, but each appeal has been denied.
When the United States Supreme Court decided not to step in early this year, it left the decision on Dunlap’s fate largely up to Gov. John Hickenlooper.
Under Colorado law, the governor can grant clemency to condemned killers, and Hickenlooper said in recent weeks that making a decision on Dunlap’s life was the most difficult he has faced as governor. He met with several people connected to the case in recent weeks, including the families of the victims, prosecutors, and Dunlap’s defense team.
In their request for clemency, Dunlap’s lawyers said his diagnosed bipolar disorder, family history of abuse and mental illness, as well as the flawed way Colorado uses the death penalty were reasons for the governor to grant clemency.
In their petition, the defense included an apology from Dunlap himself.
“I’m just sorry for everything that happened on December 14, 1993 and the ripple effect that followed,” he wrote. “As I’ve put my thoughts and feelings to paper, I know saying, writing, and feeling sorry isn’t enough and I wish there was something more that I could do to relieve any pain.”
The defense also said the fact that all three men on Colorado death row are black, even though just 4 percent of the state’s population is black, show just how flawed the state’s death penalty system is.
But prosecutors as well as the victims families and the sole surviving victim urged Hickenlooper to stay out of the case and let Dunlap’s execution go forward.
Prosecutors argued that the brutality of Dunlap’s crime, his lack of remorse, and the fact that several courts have already upheld his death sentence mean the governor should resist calls to step in. They also called contentions that Dunlap’s race played a role in his sentence “vile.”
At the same time they asked for clemency, the defense launched another fight against how the Colorado Department of Corrections carries out death sentences, arguing that the secretive nature of the DOC’s procedures violate state law. But two courts have rejected the defense arguments on that front, leaving them with an appeal to the Colorado Supreme Court as likely their only option.
Dunlap’s lawyers are also set to argue that the state’s death penalty is “cruel and unusual.” A judge last month gave them until May 23 to file motions on that topic, and a hearing on the matter is set for June 10 in Arapahoe County District Court.
Phil Cherner, Dunlaps lawyer, said he and the team of lawyers who have spent years trying to save Dunlap from execution were happy with the governor’s
decision.
But, Cherner said, neither he or Dunlap are celebrating considering the brutality of Dunlap’s crime.
In response to Brauchler’s comments about Dunlap smiling, Cherner said Dunlap “is not going to bed with a smile” tonight.
“He is truly sad for what happened,” Cherner said.
The full text of Hickenlooper’s announcement can be found here.
Bloomberg has spoke. The spineless puppet Hickenlooper has become.
To My Niece, April Crowell
May 13, 2013
April,
I have read the 32 pages of Matt Maillaro,’s response to Nathan Dunlap’s Petition for Executive Clemency, dated May 10, 2013 that you passed along. (as addresses to the Governor of Colorado).
Unless Governor Hickenlooper has a suppressed or political agenda, I see no viable reason for accepting Dunlap’s Petition for Executive Clemency. I’m no judicial scholar, but even I can see Mr. Maillaro has done an outstanding job of condensing the untold number of transcripts into an understandable document.
To Governor Hickenlooper, I say….Even if one does not believe in established religions, religious based beliefs of many forms have governed mankind’s actions for over two thousand years. Even if one does not believe every word man has written as law, one must respect the fact that written laws (regardless of their origin) have also served humanity well for thousands of years. Through our elected representatives, we have expressed (and demanded) limits be set forth so we can have something more than a savage, dog-eat-dog existence on this planet. Furthermore, we have said that for violations of these laws we have made, there shall be consequences. And we have set forth in advance those consequences.
To Governor Hickenlooper, I say…Now, is it right for one man to come along and say he realizes what the majority of the citizens want but insist on doing his own thing? Should he be allowed to say that as one person, he will defy thousands and disregard their conclusion of the facts and their desires? May he say he will set aside what the majority demand, because to do so will mean that he and his people will not be reelected? (Although, technically, he has the right as governor…but, the governor of who..?)
To Governor Hickenlooper, I say…I understand ‘reasonable doubt.’ Most folks do. I trust an honest survey would reveal that well over 90 percent of the citizens would also demand conviction be established only upon passing the standard of ‘beyond reasonable doubt”. In Nathan Dunlap’s case, there is NO doubt of his guilt concerning his intentional evil deeds that December night in 1993.
To Governor Hickenlooper, I say…There are many out there who oppose capital punishment and believe there is no link to its deterrence of major crime. I totally disagree with that assumption; and I do consider it an assumption. But it is also the belief of many that if capital punishment is abolished, only then will we actually see the true deterrence capital punishment has had for so many years. Shall we take a gamble on getting rid of capital punishment only to see major crime skyrocket? Governor Hickenlooper, don’t roll those dice.
April, know that I and thousands, perhaps millions, more are hoping or praying Governor Hickenlooper does the right thing. They are all hoping and praying Nathan Dunlap receives his just consequences (death by the State) no later than 11:59 p.m. (local time in Colorado), Saturday, August 24, 2013.
April, I love you and I am sorry you had to grow into the adult you are today without your big sister, your best friend. I am sorry your mom and dad had to bury their beautiful little girl just a few days before Christmas.
I am sorry Ben, Colleen, and Margaret had to loose their lives to such a mean and selfish individual. What kind of Colorado citizens would they have made?
Uncle Roger