tv Death Row Stories CNN September 7, 2014 7:00pm-8:01pm PDT
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injustice. >> i don't know what the outcome will be. this is a good case. >> i knew we were right. >> i think this is a good system. xx. i wanted them dead. >> you didn't think their lives -- >> i didn't have no association with them. to me, their life wasn't nothing. >> narrator: in 1997 nathan dunlap killed four people at a chuck e. cheese's outside of denver, colorado. he was sentenced to death. >> he is remorseless as he talks about his murderous decision-making. >> does it bother you that they are dead, nathan.
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>> no. >> he killed four people and he's paid for it with his life. >> narrator: support for dunlap's death sentence was overwhelming. >> the death penalty. no doubt in my mind. >> mr. dunlap should be allowed to come out of the penitentiary only in a pine box. >> he took lives that he was not entitled to take for self-defense, self-preservation, nothing. this man is a mass murderer. he deserves death. >> narrator: for 20 years as he appealed his death sentence, violence continued to strike colorado. >> masked gunmen walked into columbine high school. >> shooting at the theater. there is somebody shooting in the auditorium. >> narrator: cries for vengeance increased. >> kill all of them, colorado. that will take care of all this crap. >> narrator: in 2013, nathan dunlap's execution order landed on the desk of governor hickenlooper. in a twist of fate the
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governor's own political fortunes came to rest on his decision. >> we'll have an election in 2014 where yeah is do we want to kill this one perso. >> narrator: the case posed the question what should be done with society's most heinous criminals. >> the death penalty has emotional issues for any of us. life and death, justice. all the stuff comes back together when trying to decide what to do with the worst of the worst. >> [ bleep ]. >> there is a body in the water. >> he was butchered and murdered. >> many people proclaim their innocence. >> in this case there are a number of things that stink. >> this man is remorseless. >> he needs to pay with his life. >> the electric chair flashed in front of my eyes. >> let the truth fall where it may.
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>> narrator: evil was about to strike in the most unlikely of places. >> it was chuck e. cheese. it was a family place. they go to play games, play with your kids. >> narrator: 20-year-old bobby stevens, father to a newborn baby boy was working a double shift in the pizza restaurant's kitchen. >> i picked up the chuck e. cheese job as a second job to help with the income, help with christmas that was coming. it was business as normal. >> narrator: also working that night were 19-year-old sylvia crowell from nearby metro state
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college. and grant, a 17-year-old high school wrestler and colean o'connor, a senior at eagle crest high school. marge colburg, 50, a mother of two was working her first night alone as manager. also working there they than dunlap. >> he's let go. he has an attitude problem and is a discipline issue for the management. on the particular night in question, nathan goes into the chuck e. cheese's and orders dinner. >> nathan plays a shooter game. chuck e. cheese's closes. he goes into the bathroom, waits. he goes to the mirror, gets psyched up. looks at himself, tells himself he can do this. he pulls out the gun, walks
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outside. starts to shoot people in the head. >> narrator: bobby stevens was walking inside after a smoking break. >> as i went back into work i started hearing gunshots. i thought somebody dropped something. >> narrator: sylvia was the first person shot. she never saw dunlap coming. ben grant, vacuuming, was killed next. >> i heard the next two shots. the only thing that came to mind was the kids are out there popping balloons. >> narrator: colleen o'connor saw dunlap approaching. she sank to her knees, and pleaded to her life. dunlap fired a bullet through the top of her head. >> i was loading some utensils into the dishwasher. i turned around and nathan dunlap came through the kitchen door. right then is when i knew i was
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in trouble. to be honest the only words out of my mouth was, oh [ bleep ]. he raised the gun and shot me. >> narrator: the bullet hit bobby in the jaw. he fell to the floor. >> as he stood there i was expecting to be shot again and that would be the end of it. but i played dead. i held as still as i could be. it actually worked. he walked on. i got up and i ran out the kitchen. >> narrator: dunlap entered the office where he forced marge to unlock the safe. after it was open he shot marge in the ear. >> as nathan was gathering the cash he notices that marge is still moving. he shoots her in the other ear. >> narrator: bobby stevens, covered with blood, stumbled through the dining room and fled through a side door in search of help. >> all i saw was a patio light. i stumbled along the way but ran
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to the light as fast as i could. >> emergency, 911. >> i have a man who's been shot in my house right here. he came from chuck e. cheese. he says there were a lot of people shot there. >> we have a call to chuck e. cheese. we have officers. >> someone searching the place. we have several people down. shot and d.o.a. >> media picked up on it quickly. parents are responding. people are calling each other. the parking lot is a zoo. >> everyone, the whole community was shooting at chuck e. cheese? >> no! no! >> the normally festive pizza shop was transformed into a scene of carnage and chaos. >> my best friends are in there. they won't say anything. it drives us crazy. >> police say it is the worst crime in aurora in years. >> we always had the news on. always.
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for some reason that night we didn't. the phone rings. it's my sister. she said, there's something on the news about chuck e. cheese. is that the restaurant that colleen works at? we went down and they told us to go into tony roma's. we went in and colleen wasn't there. i started shaking. >> a friend of mine called. he was on the police force. he said there's been a shooting down at chuck e. cheese. he said you better come down right away. >> the police officer came up and said your daughter has been air lifted to denver general. >> we were told that she was taken to a hospital, so i went and saw that she was breathing. but that was about it. the doctors said she didn't have a chance.
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>> the doctor said she's brain dead. i didn't know what that meant. i looked at the minister and said, is her soul in or out. do you know what i'm saying? he said, she's with god now. >> narrator: outside chuck e. cheese, police con vascul-- can crowd for leads. >> my partner said, we talked to a guy who said who did this. his name is nathan dunlap. he's been bragging he was coming back to kill a manager. we had the name right off the bat. >> narrator: police had a suspect. but now they had to find him. once they did, the story would become more complicated than they ever could have imagined.
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common side effects include nausea, trouble sleeping and unusual dreams. i did not know what it was like to be a non-smoker. but i do now. ask your doctor if chantix is right for you. >> narrator: as police in aurora, colorado, began investigating the brutal murder ers at chuck e. cheese's, they immediately focused on the suspect. disgruntled ex-employee nathan dunlap. he had apparently been open about his plans. >> sometime in december he begins to tell his friends that he intends to rob chuck e. cheese's and he's going to kill everybody in there. >> narrator: following the shooting, concerned parents rushed to the scene. among the crowd was nathan dunlap's mother, carol.
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>> we started talking with her. her views at that point was that he didn't do this, but if you think he did, let's get this taken care of. she called him. she told him, you need to come home and talk with the police right now. >> they ended up finding him at his girlfriend's house. he was having sex with her. when he got the call to come back to his house which was his mother's home, he got in the shower. >> narrator: after scrubbing away physical evidence nathan was picked up by police and questioned. >> left my house around 9:10, 9:20. >> nathan said, i wasn't to chuck e. cheese. i was hungry. >> i went in, ordered a sandwich. >> narrator: nathan said he learned about the massacre from the news. >> they thought for sure he's part of it, but what do we have to hold him?
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nothing. >> narrator: shooting survivor bobby stevens was unconscious in the hospital and unable to help police. once they interrogated nathan's girlfriend tracy, things changed. tracy admitted nathan arrived with bundles of cash and a gun. asking her to help dispose of the evidence. that afternoon, police took nathan into custody. over the next few weeks, investigators learned that before going to tracy's house, nathan visited two other friends and bragged about killing people execution-style at chuck e. cheese. >> he showed them the evidence of it. he showed them money. he showed trinkets he picked up. these are the people. they were charged as accessories. >> narrator: on december 23, 1993 police charged nathan dunlap with four counts of first-degree murder. prosecutors would now need to decide what punishment to seek. life in prison or the death penalty.
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for local residents the murders at chuck e. cheese's crossed a red line. enough was must have. >> i became the district tone of denver in june of 1993. it was at the beginning of what later became termed the summer of violence. because of the amount of pretty high profile crimes and it was on the 10:00 news almost every night. >> an epidemic of violence is sweeping american children out of homes and classrooms and onto our meanest streets. >> cops say they have never seen anything like it. >> our quality of life is threatened when our children can't play in the street. >> there were children that were just random victims because one gang member shot at another. >> our babies, our babies. leave the babies alone. >> the public is frightened. >> narrator: amplifying nationwide fears, the media seized upon a label for a new class of ultra violent oh
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offenders. >> criminologists call them super predators. >> it's kid who is had access to kids. didn't seem to have developed a conscience over time. >> police departments in the cities warn of a new generation of super predators who have no compulsion about taking human life. >> the narrative became about violence, gang violence, juvenile violence. having nathan dunlap kill four people at a chuck e. cheese fed right into that. >> narrator: for many, nathan was the definition of a super predator and deserved nothing less than death. >> he had escalating violence throughout his teenage years. he started robbing places with a golf club. that escalated to guns eventually. >> we learned he had been involved in serious crimes. >> narrator: prosecutors first tried nathan for one of the robberies and convicted him. with a violent crime now on nathan's record the d.a.'s office announced they would
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aggressively pursue the death penalty. >> the dunlap case arose in arapahoe county which is part of a district in colorado which is now and has in the past been madly in love with the death penalty. >> narrator: by the time nathan's murder trial began in 1996 the verdict seemed to be a foregone conclusion. >> the trial then essentially becomes about whether what he did is deserving of the death penalty. >> narrator: before trial his defense team made an offer to the state. nathan would plead guilty in exchange for a life sentence. >> it comes down to what's the appropriate sentence that we were seeking? is it appropriate to plead this to life in prison? and it was not. >> narrator: at trial nathan's lawyers called almost no witnesses and offered little
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defense for his actions. it took the jury only three and a half hours to come to a verdict. >> we the jury find the defendant guilty of murder in the first-degree. >> narrator: during sentencing the jury delivered a clear message giving nathan four death sentences, one for each victim. >> it has to be all 12 jurors say i personally agree with the death sentence. if one person says no then it's a life sentence. >> narrator: though he was impassive during trial at the hearing where the judge imposed the death sentence nathan responded directly to remarks by the victims' family members. >> man i don't give [ bleep ] about you, your mama, your whole [ bleep ] -- i don't give a [ bleep ] about you. >> he blew up. he was screaming. >> [ bleep ]. >> i think people in the courtroom got to see nathan dunlap as nathan dunlap.
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>> i don't give a [ bleep ], man. i will kill you right now. [ bleep ]. >> how angered he could be. how vicious he could be. when you saw him and you saw the look on his face, he was a different person. >> [ bleep ]. i can't do this, [ bleep ]. >> in the years to come, disturbing details would emerge about nathan dunlap. details that would help explain his violent actions. and also weigh heavily in the governor's decision whether or not to put nathan to death. [ female announcer ] you get sick, you can't breathe through your nose...
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>> narrator: before nathan dunlap was sentenced to death for killing four people at a chuck e. cheese's restaurant questions began to arise about his mental state. >> there are outbursts that he has in which psychological evaluators start asking is he fit to stand trial? >> narrator: during the run are-up to trial, nathan's behavior became erratic including violent mood swings, signs of depression. even incidents of spreading feces over his cell and on himself. nathan's sister arranged to visit him in jail. >> when i first saw him was when i began to think, okay, something is not right. his eyes were glassy. his hair was with everywhere. he was rambling.
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i was trying to get him to calm down. >> narrator: nathan was put on suicide watch and moved to a padded cell. >> his eyes reminded me of seeing my mother when she was in a manic episode. so when i saw him, i saw her eyes. >> narrator: throughout their childhood their mother suffered from bipola disorder which caused unpredictable behavior and mood shifts. >> nathan's mother at times would berate the children, wake them up in the night. walk around the home naked. >> narrator: during carol's manic episodes she might have experienced hyper sexual behavior in addition to severely abusing her children. >> as a child when you see that it was very confusing. >> narrator: carol, whose father and brother were also bipolar, was in and out of institutions. >> my mom would go to the
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hospital. we wouldn't understand what was going on. my dad would take care of us. the abuse and intimidation from my dad started very early with nathan by grabbing him by the collar, picking him up. it wasn't anything for him to hit him and knock him. >> narrator: nathan wasn't the only target of jerry dunlap's rage. >> my dad did sexually abuse me probably from the time i was about 9 until 14. there was a time where nathan came down stairs when some of this was going on. my dad thought he saw it. i think after that, the abuse was really bad. i mean, it was horrible. >> narrator: due to the severity of his crime and signs of mental
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instability, before trial nathan was sent for testing. >> he was brought down to pueblo for a psychological evaluation about whether he was legally insane. >> narrator: numerous psychiatrists at the colorado mental health institute observed nathan, trying to determine whether he was competent to stand trial. >> we are identifying that what he's looking like is similar to what we have experienced with my mother, her brother, and her father. >> they spent time observing him closely and sent him back with a report that didn't just say nathan dunlap was competent to stand trial but said he was a malingerer, a faker. tended to create symptoms consistent with what he wanted to be true. >> narrator: state psychiatrists never had full access to the medical records or family history. the defense believed the evaluation was biased. >> there is an argument over
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whether he does have mental health problems. or whether he's faking. in an effort to make an insanity plea or avoid the death penalty. >> narrator: during trial, nathan's attorneys never mentioned his psychiatric evaluations or the idea he may have been suffering from a mental break during the massacre. >> the defense is afraid if those charges came out, it would inflame the jury even further against nathan dunlap. so it's never a factor in the ultimate death penalty verdict. >> right around this time around the '90s, colorado executed its first prisoner in about three decades. >> colorado inmate gary davis was pronounced dead at 8:33 this evening. >> narrator: gary lee davis's
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execution sent nathan into a tail spin. >> the guards were taunting him that he was next. that day he had a manic break. he really just started ranting and raving, had to be hospitalized shortly thereafter. >> narrator: nathan's ongoing str struggles brought about a major shift in a peel strategy. now the legal arguments would be based on nathan's mental health. >> they proceeded to file over a period of years his motion for post conviction relief, alleging that the trial attorney was ineffective. so therefore he didn't receive a fair trial. >> narrator: if granted post conviction relief nathan's sentence could be converted to life in prison. his appeals would bring up a critical question that long surrounded the death penalty -- how mentally ill does a convict need to be to avoid being executed?
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>> there is no competent, credible doctors that will tell you his evil conduct was the product of being in a manic state, that his conduct was somehow altered by being bipolar or suffering any other mental illness. >> narrator: the idea that nathan could escape death due to mental illness enraged the victims' families and the survivor. >> in my head he had to be crazy. how would a sane person walk into a child's pizzeria and shoot five people? he took the lives of five other people. i believe in an eye for an eye. >> the fact that the death penalty was ordered, that was right. that was the thing to do. as far as life in prison, nathan dunlap doesn't deserve that. he deserves to die. hey pal? you ready?
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and a path to success. joining the soccer team. getting help with math. going to prom. i want to learn to swim. it's hard to feel normal, when you can't do the normal things. to help, sleep train is collecting donations for the extra activities that, for most kids, are a normal part of growing up. not everyone can be a foster parent... but anyone can help a foster child. in june 2005, 12 years after the chuck e. cheese massacre another crime occurred in aurora that would affect the dunlap case and the death penalty in
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colorado. javad marshall fields and his fiancee were on their way to dinner. >> vivian just loved life. they were recent graduates from colorado state university. she had just graduated with a b.a. in nutrition. my son had graduated with a bachelor's degree in speech communication and rhetoric. >> narrator: just three miles from where the massacre took place they were stopped at a red light when a car pulled alongside and someone opened fire. >> gunmen attacked this car with bullets killing marshall fields and vivian wolf. >> finding out i lost my son was the most denver stating event i have ever experienced in my life. i was very, very angry. i was very upset. so i went straight to the police department and started asking questions. >> narrator: javad witnessed a
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friend's murder at a barbecue the summer before. despite receiving death threats he decided to testify in court against the accused killer. >> he felt it was the right thing to do because he saw his best friend get shot down in cold blood. javad was murder ed five days before the trial was set to begin. >> narrator: months later, owens and ray who had been implicated in the barbecue shooting were indicted for javad and vivian's murders. >> this case becomes one of the biggest cases in colorado. the prosecution in this case, also in arapahoe county, they seek the death penalty. >> i think it's clear why we sought dte eath in this case. listen, they murdered a witness to a murder. it's not just its own killing. it is an attack on the criminal system. >> they had killed before. the thought was do you give them
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more time, more life on top of life? >> narrator: but the state's case was largely circumstantial and getting death wasn't guaranteed. so they pushed for the ultimate punishment. >> i wasn't a supporter of the death penalty prior to the death of my son. but now i believe there are some crimes that are so heinous that they deserve the highest punishment that the state has to offer. >> i have seen mothers, people killed who have been taken apart by it. their lives ruined. i have seen people who get a different thing. >> i didn't want another family member to have to experience the grief and the pain that i did. and so i worked with my elected official at the time to pass legislation to strengthen the state's witness protection laws. i was able to pass two bills just as a citizen just working
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through my own elected official. from there, i was tapped to run for office. and i did. i won. >> narrator: rhonda was elected to represent aurora in the state legislature. she won in a landslide. >> rhonda fields becomes a leader on two issues. one, gun control. very, very pro gun control. two, she's very pro death penalty. >> narrator: during the time rhonda was pushing for death for her son's killers, nathan dunlap's lawyers continued to work on his appeals. >> this was not a chance to prove he was innocent, to set him free. the focus was on his mental health and any other mitigating factors that could have gone into a jury's decision about whether he should be put to death. >> nathan dunlap's attorneys make a pretty powerful case about bipolar ti saying it
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wasn't properly explored in torjal case. >> narrator: by 2006 he was diagnosed as bipolar and on the drug lithium. once medicated nathan's behavior changed radically. he became a model prisoner. >> he was a different person from the young man even that i knew. so it certainly has to be a part of why he did what he did. >> narrator: as nathan's appeals were reviewed by the courts a movement to fully ban capital punishment in colorado was picking up speed. >> i think that america has hopelessly entangled two concepts. one is justice and the other sven jens. we need to untangle those. >> narrator: with polls showing nationwide support for the death penalty dwindling a bill was introduced in colorado to outlaw executions. >> we just felt strongly that we
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needed to start this debate, put it out there. >> narrator: as passage of the bill looked more likely, it seemed possible that rhonda's son's kills and nathan dunlap might escape the ultimate punishment after all. n who loveo share her passions. grandma! mary has atrial fibrillation, an irregular heartbeat not caused by a heart valve problem. that puts her at a greater risk of stroke. rome? sure! before xarelto®, mary took warfarin, which required monthly trips to get her blood tested. but that's history. back to the museum? not this time! now that her doctor switched her to once-a-day xarelto®, mary can leave those monthly trips behind. domestic flight? not today! like warfarin, xarelto® is proven effective to reduce afib-related stroke risk. but xarelto® is the first and only once-a-day prescription blood thinner for patients with afib not caused by a heart valve problem that doesn't require regular blood monitoring. so mary is free of that monitoring routine.
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banning capital punishment had strong support in the colorado legislature. >> the effort to repeal the death penalty in colorado came from the fact that there is a budget crisis. the death penalty is a huge money drain. there is one estimate that the nathan dunlap case cost the state $18 million. >> it is absolutely more expensive to handle a death case because of the time it takes and the appeals going forward for 20 years. >> how can we better use resources to be more effective? >> narrator: in addition to the high cost supporters of the bill argue the death penalty was used inconsistently across the state. >> in some counties the district attorneys go after a life without parole sentence. in some counties they are known for going after the death penalty. so should your are geography really determine your fate? >> there have been many multiple
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murders in colorado not prosecuted as capital cases. so the question is why. >> when you try to probe in what sense is this justice, there is no answer other than an eye for an eye. this person did this horrible, unspeakable thing and we are going to do something back to them. >> narrator: rhonda fields who continued to push for death sentences for her son's killers spoke out against the bill. >> i didn't want to see the death penalty repeal had had in our state. i think it is a tool that our d.a.s need to have access to. there has to be some level of accountability and punishment for people who commit multiple murders. >> narrator: in the end, the death penalty ban pass ntd the house but fell short in the state senate by a single vote. >> if you look back over the last decade or so, i would guess, every two years the life for killers crowd convinces
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legislatures to lower the bar for sanctions for heinous murders. those invariably fail. i don't think this is just what do i think is the appropriate law to have on the books. this is what the state of colorado thinks. >> narrator: by the time the bill failed ray and owens were sentenced to death. they joined the only other occupant on colorado's death row -- nathan dunlap. critics of the death penalty notice troubling similarities. >> owens, ray and dunlap all went oh the same high school. they were young african-american men at the time they were charged in their cases. they were all charge ed in the same exact judicial district. why are these three singled out and they are the only people on death row? >> race is extremely important. but it's not important as it
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relates to this concept of death penalty. we happen to have three african-american men who are on death row for the same thing -- cold blooded murder. in my view, it has nothing to do with race. it has everything to do about murder. >> narrator: over the next few years rhonda fields would continue to be an important voice in favor of capital punishment -- especially because the dunlap case was about to reemerge in the headlines. after nearly 20 years of court proceedings, nathan's defense team was running out of options. in 2012 the tenth circuit court rejected his final appeal. a year later, the supreme court refused to hear his case. district attorney george brockler, now in charge of the case, took decisive action. >> we set an execution date for
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august of 2013. >> now dunlap's last effort is asking the governor for clemency. >> narrator: in 2010 john hickenlooper, jr., the popular former mayor of denver won the governor's seat in commanding fashion. >> this clemency appeal arrives on john hickenlooperer's desk as the last hope for nathan dunlap's life. >> narrator: with eyes across the nation watching colorado, governor hickenlooper would be forced to decide whether nathan dunlap should live or die. (vo) friday night has always
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>> narrator: in may 2013 nathan dunlap submitted a petition for clemency to governor john hickenlooper accompanied by a video. >> i did what i did. i regret what i did to those victims' families. i came to realize that, you know, bipolar was playing a very are big role in what i was doing. >> narrator: because his mental health issues were never taken into account at trial. it also argued that the death penalty in colorado was
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infrequently used, arbitrarily sought and racially biased. district attorney george brockler's office sent a counter argument to the governor. >> we addressed the mental health issues. they had been raised before at a appeals court and now asking the governor to be the super juror. >> they gave him pictures from the crime scene, letters from the victims' families. >> narrator: as part of his process, the governor met in person with the victims' families. >> most of the victims' families were there. most of us were very adamant that he deserved the death penalty. >> i explained, you know. i remained quiet for this long. i haven't said anything. now it's time for me to speak up. i think nathan deserves to face his maker. >> narrator: some in the room,
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including victim colleen o'conn o'connor's mother felt differently. >> our family was the family that was more against the death penalty than anybody else. what i said to the governor was most of these years i haven't thought about nathan dunlap. what i have been doing is trying to heal. i said to him, governor, i wouldn't want to be in your shoes for anything. i couldn't say yes. there. >> the governor has a lot of power here to sign a death warrant or commute a sentence. so you are really presented with, i think, one of the more difficult things a human being can be presented with. that final decision that comes down to just you. >> narrator: on may 22, 2013, governor hickenlooper called the families to inform them of his decision. he then stepped in front of the
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cameras. >> what we have decided is to grant a temporary reprieve. the point of having a temporary reprieve rather than clemency is out of respect to the rule of law. >> john hickenlooper ultimately decides to temporarily postpone the execution. temporarily but indefinitely. in the sense of as long as i'm governor, nathan dunlap will not be executed. >> a reprieve is the last thing anybody expected. it's a yes or a no issue. a reprieve just defers it. >> it's like a time-out. the last reported use of the reprieve power we could find was in the mid 1890s. >> they found him guilty and sentenced him to death based on laws passed in colorado by coloradoans that remain on the law to this date. >> narrator: reaction was swift. >> i'm so furious. >> john hickenlooper made a
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mockery of the judicial system. >> i just felt like he's driving a tank over us. >> this man, he's got to be a ball of wonder. that's all i can think of hill. >> we knew when we made this decision we were making the hardest decision. we would be criticized from both sides. we try to hear the voices and perspectives. you try to get to justice. that's the justice after the judicial process to say did we miss anything? is this the right decision? this was cold-blooded in the most evil sense. i can remember listening to the details of what happened in chuck e. cheese. you are feel hatred and revulsion that's almost visceral. that's not when you should make decisions.
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that's not, you know, necessarily where justice comes from. >> narrator: the governor acknowledges the psychiatric history played a role. but also whether the state should be putting people to death at all. >> death is final. the finality is so powerful it makes us all look at it in a different sense. there is a reason 18 states banned the death penalty. i wanted the state to have an examination of issues around the death penalty. whether it is effective policy or something that is broken and really doesn't function well. >> narrator: by making the reprieve temporary the governor left open the possibility that the next election will decide nathan dunlap's fate. the day after his announcement, one of the governor's biggest political opponents declared his candidacy. >> unlike the governor, 20
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minutes after i enter the office and get a pen in my hand i will rescind the order. when the death penalty is subjected to an election, whether a gubernatorial election or a ballot measure we are saying essentially that the emotions of the mob should rule. >> certain things are not up for popular vote. i believe whether someone lives or dies should be one of those things. >> it goes back to public stoningslynchings, you know? we don't have mob justice. >> narrator: in early 2013 a poll showed a majority of coloradoans supported the death penalty and disapproved of how the governor handled the dunlap case. >> we believe in upholding the law. the law says execute him. and it's well deserved. >> the governor made it a
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political issue. there is one person in the state of colorado who is more interested in the governor being re-elected than even the governor. that's nathan dunlap. >> narrator: despite running on a pro death penalty platform in 2010 governor hickenlooper stated publically for the first time he's now against the death penalty. meanwhile, bob beaupre said that if elected he will put dunlap to death. whether that will provide justice is still an open question. >> is executing someone 20 years later really the kind of retribution that's making us as a society a better society? >> i've got a daughter murdered. i should be going kill him, kim hill. do you know how i feel? nathan rotting where he's rotting is actually worse than the death penalty. i think he deserves to stay
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exactly in the hole that he's in. and to just suffer and suffer and think about what he did. let him rot. xx. on this episode of "death row stories" a triple murder of un-i imaginable brutality. >> this is the one case that truly screams out for the death penalty. >> a soldier who can't convince his own lawyer until the prosecution's case falls apart. >> the state's primary witness said, i feel like i'm sending an innocent man to prison. >> and a shocking twist makes legal history. >> take a deep seat. they've got something to tell you. >> there's a body in the water. >> he was butchered and murdered. many people proclaim their innocence.
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