Another Colorado legislative session ended with lawmakers dealing another blow to victims. Gov. Jared Polis recently signed Senate Bill 26-115, which directly undermines the certainty and finality that victims and surviving family members deserve from the justice system in order to create yet another avenue for individuals convicted of serious crimes to seek release decades after their cases were resolved. 

This so-called second-look legislation permits violent felons to seek early release from prison after only serving a fraction of their court-imposed sentences. Killers, kidnappers, domestic abusers, terrorists, gang leaders, certain sex offenders, hackers, scammers, thieves and drug kingpins would all be eligible for release after serving 20 calendar years regardless of whether the original sentence was 40 years or 400 years. That distinction matters. A judge who heard the evidence, listened to the victims, and chose to impose the equivalent of a life sentence did it for a good reason. In Colorado, 76% of criminal defendants are sentenced to probation, so those who are sent to prison typically have earned it. In many cases now, those offenders could walk out decades before their original release date. 

Supporters of this law frame it as a compassionate response to aging incarcerated individuals. But victims and survivors are not afforded that same compassion. To many of them, this law represents another reminder that even decades after a sentence was imposed, they may be forced back into courtrooms to relive the worst moments of their lives. 

Victims of serious crime do not simply attend a sentencing hearing and move on. Many spend years, sometimes decades, participating in parole hearings, community corrections proceedings, appeals processes, resentencing efforts, and other post-conviction litigation. Each proceeding requires them to revisit traumatic events, prepare impact statements, arrange time away from work and family, some reenter therapy, and once again confront the person responsible for causing immeasurable harm and trauma. This second-look law doesn’t add one more hearing. For survivors of crime, it adds the permanent threat of one. 

Just ask actor Kelsey Grammer what it’s like to have to fight to keep your sister’s killer in prison. Karen Grammer was abducted from a Colorado Springs restaurant in 1975, brutally sexually assaulted, stabbed 42 times and left for dead. The men responsible were investigated, prosecuted and sentenced to life in prison. For her family, that sentence was supposed to represent the justice and assurance that the state felt their devastating loss and responded appropriately. But decades later, Kelsey still has to fight to simply maintain the fair sentence that was imposed during the trial every time the men responsible for killing his sister come up for parole.  

“It was like they’d just sent a knife through me,” he told a podcast last year. “Suddenly my whole 40 years that had passed before were gone, and I was back as that 20-year-old young man looking at his dead sister and it was a horrible, horrible thing.” 

That’s what relitigation costs. For many survivors and victims, healing depends in part on the stability and certainty provided by the courts. When a judge imposes a sentence, it is the product of years of evidence gathering, legal arguments and victim input. Reopening the case decades later is not just unfair – it’s practically impossible. Judges retire. Prosecutors move on. Witnesses relocate. Memories fade. The full evidentiary record that justified the original sentence may never be fully reconstructed. What will be reconstructed is the victim’s trauma. 

Survivors of violent crime have spoken clearly: they want closure. These second-look hearings aren’t even based on criteria that the offender show they have been rehabilitated. They are simply another level of uncertainty for people who never asked to be engaged in the criminal justice system in the first place. They mean years of recurring notifications, repeated victim impact statements and the constant anxiety of wondering whether the person who destroyed part of their life will soon be living freely in their community. 

Colorado voters have also spoken clearly about this issue. They overwhelmingly approved Proposition 128 at the ballot box during the last election.  The measure requires violent criminals to serve at least 85% of their sentences before parole eligibility. Rather than honor that mandate, lawmakers responded this year by passing this and other bills aimed at reduction of sentences at the request of offender advocacy groups. 

Rocky Mountain Victim Law Center, Colorado Organization for Victim Assistance, Colorado District Attorneys’ Council, and many other victim advocates all urged Gov. Polis to veto this legislation — not to ignore the challenges facing Colorado’s correctional system — but to insist that victims are not sacrificed to solve them. 

Victims deserve confidence that a sentence imposed after careful judicial consideration carries meaning. They deserve certainty that the accountability promised by the criminal legal system will not be endlessly revisited. And they deserve the opportunity to heal without the constant threat of being pulled back into proceedings decades after a case was supposedly resolved.  

Or simply put: when victims are told that justice has been served, they deserve to believe it. 

Jessica Dotter is the executive director of the Colorado District Attorneys’ Council, an organization that provides legislative support, prosecutor training and IT services including eDiscovery and case management software to all 23 district attorney’s offices in Colorado. She served 13 years as a prosecutor in Colorado, specializing in special victims crimes. She has also served as CDAC’s Sexual Assault Resource Prosecutor. Emily Tofte Nestaval, MSW, is the executive director of the Rocky Mountain Victim Law Center. She has spent 25 years advocating for survivors of violence and leading organizations focused on victim rights and systemic change. She has trained attorneys and service providers nationwide and previously held leadership roles with multiple victim services nonprofits and statewide coalitions.