Whitson touts role of social science in ending death penalty in Colorado
On March 23, 2020 Colorado became the latest US state to abolish the death penalty. Check out this article written by one of our attorneys Hollis A Whitson about how the move has been the culmination of years of work from abolitionists and social scientists who built a convincing base of evidence on the racial and geographic disparities of the death penalty in Colorado. She write on Jared Polis’s decision to immediately commute the sentences of all three men on Colorado’s death row to life imprisonment, noting that within weeks, prosecutors in the last two pending death penalty cases withdrew their requests for the death penalty. In the space of a month, the death penalty simply disappeared from the state.