Several Colorado criminal justice leaders signed a nationwide bipartisan letter Monday, asking President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to immediately take action to end the federal death penalty in the U.S.

The letter was signed by nearly 100 leaders, including Colorado’s Attorney General Phil Weiser, District Attorneys Michael Dougherty and Beth McCann, former District Attorney Stanley Garnett, former Colorado Supreme Court Justice Jean Dubofsky and former judges Frank Dubofsky and Murray Richtel.

“This is a critical moment in our nation for action,” the letter read. “We need definitive and lasting steps that go beyond a moratorium that future administrations can readily undo.”

The letter requests multifaceted steps toward ending the death penalty, including withdrawing current death penalty warrants, dismantling the death chamber at Terre Haute, Indiana, and encouraging federal prosecutors not to seek the death penalty in future cases.

Supporters of the letter, including McCann and Dougherty, called the death penalty a cruel and unusual punishment and waste of taxpayer resources.

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“I do not believe the government should be in the business of executing people,” McCann said. “The death penalty is unnecessary to protect public safety, costly, arbitrary and tinged with racial bias.”

This letter comes after former President Donald Trump’s administration executed 13 people in its last seven months in office — more than four times the number of federal executions since the death penalty was reinstated in 1988.

The administration resumed federal executions last summer after a 17-year moratorium. 

Dougherty told The Denver Gazette that state leaders weighing in on capital punishment at the federal level is an important move to show that officials from both sides of the political aisle would support the administration ending the death penalty. 

He believes the Trump administration’s push to carry out executions in the final months of his term after so many years undercuts public trust in the criminal justice system. 

“Most people leaving a job rush to pack their boxes, not to kill people. And it’s too important to rush it,” Dougherty said.

Some Colorado leaders do support the death penalty. Among its most vocal proponents are state Sen. Rhonda Fields, a Democrat, and former 18th Judicial District Attorney George Brauchler, a Republican.

Fields opposed the Colorado legislature’s efforts to repeal the death penalty, which lawmakers successfully did in 2020. Two of the three men remaining on the state’s death row at the time of the repeal received capital sentences for their roles in the murder of her son and his fiancee. 

Brauchler has voiced a number of reasons for his support of capital punishment, including the ability for families of victims to avoid an emotional, protracted trial process when defendants plead guilty to avoid the death penalty. He has also said voters should have decided whether to repeal it.

David Lane, a partner at Killmer Lane & Newman who has represented defendants in death penalty cases, said a law change eliminating the death penalty would have to come from Congress. But the executive branch under Biden could take other actions that equate to a de facto abolishment of the death penalty, he said, such as instructing the attorney general not to seek in new cases, or just not going forward with executions of people sentenced to death. 

State criminal justice leaders also sent a letter in December to then-President Trump’s administration asking them to commute the sentences of several people with execution dates set before Trump left office. But they’ll likely find friendlier company in Biden’s administration. Biden has publicly pledged his support for legislation to eliminate capital punishment, and Lane said he expects the Biden administration will not carry out any executions. 

Biden’s stance represents an about-face from his support as a Delaware senator of the sweeping 1994 crime bill, which included dozens of offenses eligible for capital punishment.

“I think Biden has recognized that he made some mistakes back in the ‘90s, and he’s backed off on those,” Lane said. “He has changed over time, which is a hallmark of an evolving person who realizes that times change and attitudes can change.”

The letter called this unprecedented wave of executions “an assault on human dignity and an affront to American values.”

“This killing spree laid bare the unacceptable injustices embedded in our nation’s use of the death penalty,” the letter read. “These tragedies demand bold and definitive action … anything short of these steps would fail to move our nation forward or attend to these pressing crises.”

The letter argued the discriminatory nature of the death penalty, pointing out that it is disproportionately given to those who are poor, suffer from mental illnesses and have intellectual disabilities.

The letter also said the death penalty is biased toward people of color, accounting for 43% of U.S. executions since 1976 and 55% of defendants currently awaiting execution. Crimes against white victims are also more likely to result in the death penalty.

“Many have tried for over 40 years to make America’s death penalty system just,” the letter read. “Yet the reality is that our nation’s use of this sanction cannot be repaired, and it should be ended.”

This call to end the federal death penalty aligns with Colorado, as the state abolished the death penalty in March 2020.

“The federal government should follow Colorado’s lead,” Dougherty said. “The death penalty is not just, it causes decades of delays for the victim’s loved ones, (and) runs the risk of wrongful convictions that cannot be reversed.”

Though Biden has not taken any action during his first days in office, he campaigned on eliminating the death penalty in 2020, promising to work to pass legislation at a federal level and incentivize states to do the same.

According to a Jan. 19 memo from White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain, Biden will sign several executive orders between Jan. 25 and Feb. 1 to “begin fulfilling campaign promises related to reforming our criminal justice system.”