Death Penalty in the State of Colorado - Assignment Example

This paper aims to discuss the implementation of the death penalty in the state of Colorado, United States. It should be noted that the death sentence in the state of Colorado is legal. However, it is authorized for certain offences only. The criminal offences that are authorized with the death penalty include first-degree murder with at least 1 of 17 aggravating factors, treason and first-degree kidnapping (Palmer, 2013).

As per the statute of the US, the execution of the death penalty in Colorado is undertaken by lethal injection of chosen drugs into the criminal’s body for immediate death. This is the only way of undertaking the death penalty in Colorado. Earlier, there were a number of ways in which the death sentence was being undertaken that included gas chambers etc (Palmer, 2013).

The debate on the death penalty is Colorado is not proposing the demolishment but rather considers it as an effective strategy against criminal offences. However, the implementation requires a lot of investigation before the overall decision. Recently, the case of Nathan Dunlap has gained much attention from the media as the legislation has been questioned for its effective decision-making in finding necessary evidence (Palmer, 2013).

In order to make sure that all acute criminal offences are being addressed with proper implementation of the death penalty, the seventeenth aggravating factors were listed. These included the murderer being heinous, the murderer’s purpose to gain pecuniary benefits, the victim being kept as a hostage, the victim being personnel of a governmental institution, the defendant committing treason against the national interest etc. (Palmer, 2013).