Capital punishment was abolished in Colorado in 2020. It was legal from 1974 until 2020 prior to it being abolished in all future cases.
It was reinstated in 1974 by popular vote, with 61% in favor of the measure that was referred to the voters by the state legislature.[1]
In March 2020, the Colorado Legislature passed a bill to repeal the death penalty for individuals for crimes committed after July 1, 2020. The bill was signed by the governor of Colorado on March 23, 2020.[2][3] The law is not retroactive, including to the three inmates who were then housed on death row, but these sentences were commuted to life imprisonment by governor Jared Polis.
Only one inmate, Gary Lee Davis, has been executed in Colorado since the 1970s. Another man, Stephen Morin, received a death sentence in Colorado, but was executed in Texas for separate murders.