The History of the Death Penalty in Colorado

Scholars in recent years have increasingly turned to regions, states, and even counties to understand the uneven practice of capital punishment in the United States. Into this wave of local studies comes the distinguished sociologist Michael L. Radelet's The History of the Death Penalty in Colorado. Drawing on newspaper archives and legal databases, Radelet impressively pieces together a comprehensive account of the death penalty in Colorado, from quasi-judicial hangings in territorial Denver to the 2014 capital trial of James Holmes, who fatally shot twelve people in an Aurora movie theater in 2012. Radelet has done yeoman's work here, finding executions not listed in M. Watt Espy's database, the go-to national registry of historical executions for death penalty scholars. Even more impressively, he recovered hard-to-find knowledge about people the state tried, but failed, to put to death. Extensive appendices offer detailed, paragraph-long stories of the 202 capital defendants in Colorado's history, including the 103 whom it executed

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