Files

Abstract

The Colorado death penalty is connected in its anti-blackness and white supremacy to Colorado's periods of racialized lynchings. Though it seems that these two time periods are disparate, this essay connects their threads. From 1886-1901 and 1990-2020, a state-sponsored continuum of white supremacy existed within the Colorado death penalty. This essay uses historical research to narrate the anti-black extralegal and state-sponsored killings in both of these periods of time. Additionally, this essay demonstrates that each stage of death penalty sentencing in the state was more deadly for non-white defendants than white defendants as well as more deadly for those with white victims. Lastly, examination of the cases of the all black 2020 death row inmates demonstrates that in addition to the white supremacist nature of the Colorado death penalty, in which non-white people are more severely punished and white people are kept from the death chamber, the Colorado death penalty operates on clear anti-Blackness as well. This anti-Blackness operates in large part through the way understandings of violent criminals in Colorado from 1990-2020 are framed through the use of supposedly African American attributes to understand criminality.

Details

Statistics

from
to
Export
Download Full History