Death Row Stories (2014–…): Season 1, Episode 8 - Eye for an Eye - full transcript
And you didn't take the time to think
that their life was...
In 1993,
Nathan Dunlap killed four people at
a Chuck E. Cheese's restaurant
just outside of Denver, Colorado.
He was sentenced to death.
He is remorseless as he talks about his
murderous decision-making.
Does it bother you that
they're dead, Nathan?
He killed four people. He needs to pay for
it with his life.
Colorado had not executed anyone
since the late 1960s,
but support for Dunlap's death sentence
was overwhelming.
The death penalty, no doubt in my mind...
- Mr. Dunlap should be allowed to come out of the penitentiary...
- only in a pine box
He took lives that he
was not entitled to take,
not for self-defense,
not for self-preservation, nothing.
This man is a mass murderer
and he deserves death.
For 20 years, as Dunlap appealed
his death sentence,
violence continued to strike Colorado.
Masked gunmen walked
into Columbine High School...
... shooting at Century Theaters.
They say there's someone
shooting in the auditorium...
And cries for vengeance increased.
Too many criminals!
It's time all of em die!
Kill all of them, Colorado! And that will
take care of this crap!
In 2013, Nathan Dunlap's execution
order landed on the desk
of Governor John Hickenlooper.
And in an odd twist of fate,
the governor's own
political fortunes
would come to rest on his decision.
We're gonna have an election in 2014, where
one of the questions is,
do we want to kill this one person?
The case sparked a raging debate
over capital punishment
and posed the question,
"What should be done with society's
most heinous criminals?"
- The death penalty encompasses what's
highly emotional issues - for any of us.
It's life and death. It's justice.
All that stuff comes back together,
- on trying to decide what we do with
- the worst of the worst.
There's a body in the water.
He was butchered and murdered.
Many people proclaimed their innocence.
In this case,
there are a number of things that stink.
This man is remorseless.
He needs to pay for it with his life.
The electric chair,
flashed in front of my eyes.
Get a conviction at all costs.
Let the truth fall where it may.
In Aurora, Colorado, on the night
of December 14th, 1993,
evil was about to strike in
the most unlikely of places.
It was Chuck E. Cheese.
It was a family place.
You go there to play games.
You go there to play with your kids.
20-year-old Bobby Stephens, father
to a newborn baby boy,
was working a double shift in
the pizza restaurant's kitchen.
I picked up the Chuck E. Cheese
job as a second job
to help with the income,
and you know,
help with Christmas that was coming.
Um, I'd only been there for two weeks,
but, uh,
it was business as normal.
Also working that night were 19-year-old
Sylvia Crowell,
a student at nearby Metro State College.
Ben Grant,
a 17-year-old high school wrestler,
and Colleen O'Connor, also 17,
a senior at Eaglecrest High School.
Marge Kohlberg, 50 and a mother of two,
was working her first
night alone as manager.
Out in the dining room sat
19-year-old former employee,
Nathan Dunlap.
Nathan Dunlap worked there for a time,
but ultimately he is let go.
He has a bit of an attitude problem
and is a bit of a discipline issue
for the management.
So on the particular night in question,
Nathan Dunlap
goes into that Chuck E. Cheese's
and he orders dinner.
Dunlap plays video games,
plays a shooter video game,
"Hogan's Alley".
Chuck E. Cheese closes.
Dunlap goes into the bathroom,
waits in the bathroom.
He goes to the mirror and he gets
himself psyched up,
looks at himself and tells himself
he can do this.
And he pulls out his
gun and he walks outside
and he starts to shoot people in the head.
- Bobby Stephens was walking inside after
- a smoking break.
As I went back into work is when I started
hearing the gunshots.
I thought somebody dropped something.
- Sylvia Crowell, who had been cleaning
- the salad bar,
Was the first person shot.
She never saw Dunlap coming.
Ben Grant, vacuuming, was killed next.
I heard the next two
shots. Th-the only thing
that came to my mind
was the kids are out
there popping the balloons.
- Colleen O'Connor saw Dunlap approaching.
- She sank to her knees,
Clasped her hands together,
and pleaded for her life.
But Dunlap fired a bullet
through the top of her head.
I was loading some utensils
into the dishwasher.
I had turned around, and Nathan Dunlap
came through the kitchen door.
Right then is when I knew I was in trouble.
And to be honest with you,
the only words that
can come out my mouth was, "Oh,"
And he raised the gun and he shot at me.
The bullet hit Bobby in the jaw,
he fell to the floor.
As he stood there,
I was actually expecting for me
to be shot again
and that would be the end of it. Um,
but I, I played dead.
I, I held as still as I could possibly be.
And it actually worked.
He walked on. And I got
up and I ran out the kitchen.
Dunlap entered the office,
where he forced Marge
Kohlberg to unlock the safe.
After it was open,
he shot Marge in the ear.
As Nathan's gathering the cash, he notices
that Marge is still moving.
And he shoots her in the other ear.
- Bobby Stephens, covered with blood,
stumbled - through the dining room
And fled through a side door,
in search of help.
All I saw was a patio light. And I
stumbled along the way,
but I ran to that light as fast as I could.
Of course, the media picked up on it
very quickly.
Parents are responding.
People are calling each
other. The parking lot is a zoo.
Everyone, the whole community, was just,
"A shooting at Chuck E. Cheese"?
No no no!
The normally festive pizza shop was
transformed into
a scene of carnage, and chaos.
- My best friends are in there. They won't
even say anything - and it drives us crazy!
Police say it's the worst crime
in Aurora in years.
We always had the news on. Always.
For some reason that night we didn't.
Um, the phone rings and it's my sister.
- She said, "Jodie, there's something
on the news - about Chuck E. Cheese's.
- Is that the Chuck E. Cheese
restaurant that, that - Colleen works at?"
So we went down there and they told us to
go into Tony Roma's.
Went into Tony Roma's
and Colleen was not there.
And then I started
shaking. I started shaking.
A friend of mine called, he was on
the police force
and he said, uh,
"There's been a shooting
down at Chuck E. Cheese,"
and he said, "well you better
come down here right away."
A police officer came up and said,
"Your daughter has been
air-lifted to Denver General."
We were told that she was
taken to a hospital.
So, I went and saw that she was breathing,
but that was about it.
The doctors said that
she didn't have a chance.
The doctor said, um,
"She's brain dead."
I didn't know what brain dead meant.
So I looked at the minister
that was there. And I said,
"Is her soul in or out
And he said, um,
"She's with God now."
Outside Chuck E. Cheese's, police
canvassed the crowd for leads.
My partner says, "You're not gonna
believe this."
We just talked to a guy outside
who was telling us who did this.
He said his name is Nathan Dunlap and
he's an ex-employee here.
- And he'd been bragging to people that
he's gonna - come back and kill the manager.
So we had the name right off the bat.
Police had a suspect, but now,
they had to find him.
And once they did,
the story would become more complicated
than they ever could have imagined.
As police in Aurora, Colorado
began investigating
the brutal murders at Chuck E. Cheese's,
they immediately focused on a suspect,
disgruntled ex-employee, Nathan Dunlap.
Dunlap had apparently been
very open about his plans.
Sometime in December, he begins to
tell his compatriots,
his friends,
that he intends to rob Chuck E. Cheese's
and he's going to kill everybody in there.
Following the shooting, concerned parents
rushed to the scene.
Among the crowd was Nathan Dunlap's mother,
Carol.
We started talking with her.
And her views at that point was that,
he didn't do this.
But if you think he did,
let's get this taken care of.
She called him and she told him,
"You need to come home and talk with
the police right now."
They ended up finding
him at his girlfriend's house.
Um, he was having sex with her
and when he got the call
to come back to his house,
which was his mother's home,
he got in the shower.
After scrubbing away any physical evidence,
Nathan was picked up
by police and questioned.
Nathan told them "I
went to Chuck E. Cheese.
I was hungry."
Nathan said he'd learned about the massacre
from the news.
They thought, "For sure he's part of this.
But what do we have to hold him? Nothing."
Shooting survivor, Bobby Stephens,
was unconscious in the hospital,
and unable to help police.
But once they interrogated
Nathan's girlfriend, Tracie,
things changed.
Tracie admitted Nathan
had arrived at her house
with bundles of cash and a gun,
asking her to help dispose of the evidence.
That afternoon,
police took Nathan into custody.
Over the next few weeks,
investigators learned that
before going to Tracie's house,
Nathan visited
two other friends
and bragged about killing people,
execution style,
at Chuck E. Cheese's.
- He told them what he did. He showed them
- the evidence of it.
- He showed them money. He showed
them trinkets - that he'd picked up.
These other people,
they were charged as accessories.
On December 23, 1993,
police charged Nathan Dunlap
with four counts of first-degree murder.
Prosecutors would now need to decide
what punishment to seek.
Life in prison or the death penalty.
For local residents, the murders
at Chuck E. Cheese's
crossed a clear red line.
Enough was enough.
I became the District Attorney of
Denver in June of 1993.
And it was at the beginning
of what later became termed
the "Summer of Violence."
Because of the amount
of pretty high profile crimes
and it was on the 10:00
news almost every night.
An epidemic of violence is
sweeping American children
out of homes and classrooms
and on to our meanest streets.
Cops say they've never
seen anything like it.
Our quality of life is being threatened
when our children can't play in the street.
- I mean, there were children
that were just - just random victims
Because one gang member shot at another.
Our babies! This is our babies!
Just leave them babies alone!
I'll tell you, the public was frightened.
Amplifying nationwide fears,
the media seized upon
a label for a new class of
ultra-violent offenders.
- Criminologists call them
"Super predators," - as Debra says.
Super predators? - Super predators.
The super predator was
about juvenile kids who
had access to guns and
didn't seem to have developed
a conscience over time.
- Police departments in our cities warn of
- a new generation
Of quote, "Super predators",
who have no compunction
about taking human life.
The narrative became about violence,
gang violence, juvenile violence,
and having Nathan
Dunlap kill four people at
a Chuck E. Cheese
just fed right into all of that.
For many, Nathan was the definition
of a "super predator",
and deserved nothing less than death.
He had escalating violence
throughout his teenage years.
He started robbing places with a golf club,
and that
escalated to guns eventually.
We learned that Nathan Dunlap
had been involved in
some very serious crimes.
Prosecutors first tried Nathan for
one of the robberies,
and convicted him.
With a violent crime
now on Nathan's record,
the DA's office announced
they would aggressively
pursue the death penalty.
The Dunlap case arose in Arapahoe County,
which is part of the
18th Judicial District,
which in Colorado is now
and has in the past been madly in love
with the death penalty.
By the time Nathan's
murder trial began in 1996,
the verdict seemed to
be a foregone conclusion.
The trial then, essentially, becomes about
whether what Nathan
Dunlap did is deserving of
the death penalty.
In fact, before trial,
Nathan's defense team
made an offer to the state.
Nathan would plead guilty in exchange for
a life sentence.
It comes down to what's
the appropriate sentence
that we were seeking?
Um, is it appropriate to
plead this to a life in prison?
And... it was not.
At trial, Nathan's lawyers called
almost no witnesses
and offered little defense for his actions.
It took the jury only
three and a half hours
to come to a verdict.
We, the jury, find the Defendant,
Nathan Jerrod Dunlap,
guilty of murder in the first degree...
And during sentencing, the jury
delivered a clear message.
Giving Nathan four death sentences,
one for each victim.
It has to be all 12 jurors saying,
"I personally agree
with a death sentence."
If one person says, "No",
then it's a life sentence.
Though he'd been impassive during trial,
- at the hearing where the judge
officially imposed - the death sentence,
Nathan responded directly
to remarks by the victim's
family members.
Have a seat sir.
Nathan lost it.
He blew up. He was screaming.
I think people in the courtroom
got to see Nathan Dunlap as Nathan Dunlap.
How angered he could be,
how vicious he could be.
When you saw him and
you saw the look on his face,
he was a different person.
But in the years to come,
disturbing new details
would emerge about Nathan Dunlap.
Details that would help
explain his violent actions,
and also weigh heavily
in the governor's
decision whether or not to
put Nathan to death.
Before Nathan Dunlap was sentenced to death
for killing four people at a
Chuck E Cheese's restaurant,
questions began to arise
about his mental state.
There are some outbursts that he has,
in which
psychological valuators
start asking questions,
"Is he fit to stand trial?"
During the run-up to trial,
Nathan's behavior
became erratic,
including violent mood swings,
signs of depression,
and even incidents of spreading feces
over his cell and on himself.
Nathan's sister, Adinea,
arranged to visit him in jail.
When I first saw him
was when I began to think,
"Okay, something is not right."
His eyes were glassy and
his hair was everywhere.
And, uh, he was rambling.
And I was trying to get him to calm down.
Nathan was put on suicide watch,
and moved to a padded cell.
His eyes reminded me
of seeing my mother when
she was in a manic episode.
So, when I saw him, I saw her eyes.
Throughout their childhood,
Adinea and Nathan's mother,
Carol, suffered from
bipolar disorder,
a serious mental illness that
caused extreme mood shifts,
and unpredictable behavior.
Nathan Dunlap's mother would,
at times, berate the children,
wake them up in the middle of the night,
walk around the home naked.
During Carol's manic episodes,
she might experience
hyper sexual behavior,
in addition to severely
abusing her children.
As a child, when you see that,
it was very confusing.
Carol,
whose father and brother were also bipolar,
was in and out of institutions.
My mom would go to the hospital,
we wouldn't really
understand what was going on.
So my dad would take care of us.
The abuse and intimidation from my dad
started very early with Nathan
by grabbing him by the collar,
picking him up.
It wasn't anything for him
to hit him and knock him.
Nathan wasn't the only target
of Jerry Dunlap's rage.
My dad did sexually abuse me,
probably from the time I
was about nine until fourteen.
And there was a time where
Nathan came downstairs
when, some of this was going on.
And, uh,
my dad thought that he saw it and...
I think after that, abuse was really bad.
I mean it was just, it was horrible.
Due to the severity of his crime,
and signs of
mental instability,
before trial, Nathan was sent for testing.
He was brought down to Pueblo
for a psychological evaluation
about whether he was legally insane.
Numerous psychiatrists
at the Colorado Mental Health Institute
observed Nathan,
trying to determine whether he was
competent to stand trial.
We're identifying that
what he's looking like,
is similar to what we've experienced
with my mother,
her brother, and her father.
They spent time observing him very closely
and sent him back with a
report that didn't just say
Nathan Dunlap was competent to stand trial,
but said that he was a malingerer,
a faker, that he tended to
enhance or invent symptomology
consistent with what he wanted to be true.
But state psychiatrists
never had full access to
Nathan's medical records,
or family history.
And the Defense believed
the evaluation was biased.
There's an entire argument over
whether he actually does have
mental health problems,
or whether he's faking in an effort to
make an insanity plea
or avoid the death penalty.
During trial, Nathan's attorneys
never mentioned
his psychiatric evaluations,
or the idea that
he may have been
suffering from a mental
break during the massacre.
- The defense was afraid that if those
charges of - malingering came out,
It would actually inflame
the jury even further
against Nathan Dunlap.
So it's never a factor in the ultimate
death penalty verdict.
Right around this time,
towards the late 90s,
Colorado executed its first prisoner
in about three decades.
- Colorado Department of corrections
inmate, - Gary Davis, was pronounced
Was pronounced dead
at 20:33 this evening...
Gary Lee Davis' execution sent Nathan
into a tailspin.
The guards were really taunting him
that he was next.
And that day, he had a manic break.
He really just started ranting and raving
and had to be hospitalized
shortly thereafter.
Nathan's ongoing psychiatric struggles
brought about a major
shift in his appeals strategy.
Now with a new team of lawyers,
the legal arguments would be based squarely
on Nathan's mental health.
They proceeded to file
over a period of years
his motion for post-conviction relief,
alleging that the trial attorney
was ineffective.
And so, therefore,
he didn't receive a fair trial.
If granted post-conviction relief,
Nathan's sentence could
be converted to life in prison.
And his appeals would
bring up a critical question
that had long surrounded the death penalty.
How mentally ill does a convict need to be,
to avoid being executed?
- There's just no competent,
credible doctors - that will tell you
That his evil conduct was the product of
being in a manic state.
That his conduct was
somehow altered by being bipolar
or suffering from any other mental illness.
The idea that Nathan could escape death
due to mental illness,
enraged the victims' families,
and the sole survivor.
In my head, he had to be crazy.
I mean, how else would a sane person
walk into a child's pizzeria
and shoot five people?
He selfishly took the
lives of four other people.
And I'm a strong believer
in "an eye for an eye".
The fact that the death
penalty was ordered,
that was right. That was the thing to do.
As far as life in prison,
Nathan Dunlap doesn't deserve that.
He deserves to die.
In June 2005, 12 years after
the Chuck E. Cheese's massacre,
another crime occurred in Aurora that would
have a profound effect
on the Nathan Dunlap case
and the death penalty in Colorado.
Javad Marshall-Fields and his fiance,
Vivian Wolfe,
were on their way out to dinner.
Javad had a brilliant smile.
Vivian just loved life.
They were both recent graduates
from Colorado State University.
She had just graduated
with a BA in nutrition,
and my son had just graduated
with a bachelor's degree
in speech communication and rhetoric.
Just three miles from where
the Chuck E. Cheese's
massacre had taken place,
Javad and Vivian were
stopped at a red light
when a car pulled alongside
and someone opened fire.
Gunman attacked this car with bullets,
killing Javad Marshall-Fields
and Vivian Wolfe.
Finding out that I had lost my son, it was
the most devastating event
that I have ever experienced in my life.
I was very, very angry, I was very upset,
and so I went straight
to the police department
and started asking questions.
Javad had witnessed a
friend's murder at a barbecue
the summer before and despite receiving
death threats,
Javad had decided to testify in court
against the accused killer.
He felt like it was the right thing to do,
because
he saw his best friend
get shot down in cold blood.
Javad was murdered five days before
the trial was set to begin.
Months later,
Sir Mario Owens and Robert Ray,
who'd both had been implicated
in the barbecue shooting,
were indicted for Javad
and Vivian's murders.
This case becomes one of
the biggest cases in Colorado,
and the Prosecution in this case,
also in Arapahoe County,
they seek the death penalty.
I think it's pretty clear
why we sought death
in the cases of Sir Mario
Owens and Robert Ray.
Listen,
they murdered a witness to a murder.
It's not just its own killing,
it's an attack on the entire
criminal justice system.
They had killed before. So the,
the thought was,
what do you give them?
Do you give them more time,
more life on top of life?
But the State's case against Owens and Ray
was largely circumstantial,
and getting death wasn't guaranteed.
So Rhonda Fields took an active role
pushing for the ultimate punishment.
I was not a supporter of
the death penalty prior to
the death of my son.
But now,
I believe that there are some crimes
that are so heinous that they deserve
the highest punishment
that the state has to offer.
I've seen mothers of
people who were killed,
who have been taken apart by it
and their lives ruined.
But I've seen people
who did a different thing.
I did not want another family member
to have to experience
the grief and the pain that I did.
And so I, I worked with my
elected official at the time
to pass legislation
to strengthen the state's
witness protection laws.
I was able to pass two
bills just as a citizen,
just working through
my own elected official.
And so from there,
I was tapped to run for office.
And I did. And I won.
Rhonda was elected to represent Aurora
in the state legislature.
She won in a landslide.
Rhonda Fields becomes
a leader on two issues.
One, for gun control.
Very, very, very pro gun control.
Two, she is very pro death penalty.
- During the time Rhonda was pushing for
- death for her son's killers,
Nathan Dunlap's lawyers continued to
work on his appeals.
This was not a chance to
prove that he was innocent,
to, to set Dunlap free.
The focus was on his mental health
and any other mitigating
factors that could've gone into
a jury's decision about whether
he should be put to death.
Nathan Dunlap's attorneys make a pretty
powerful case about bipolarity,
saying that this was not properly explored
in the original case.
By 2006, prison doctors had finally
diagnosed Nathan as bipolar,
and put him on the powerful drug, lithium.
Once medicated,
Nathan's behavior on death row
changed radically,
and he became a model prisoner.
He was an entirely different person
from the young man even that I knew.
So it certainly has to be a part of why
he did what he did.
As Nathan's appeals were being
reviewed by the courts,
a movement to fully ban
capital punishment in Colorado
was picking up speed.
I think that America
has hopelessly entangled
two concepts.
One is justice and the other is vengeance.
And, we need to untangle those.
With polls showing nationwide support for
the death penalty dwindling,
a bill was introduced in the Colorado
state legislature
to outlaw executions.
We just felt strongly that we
needed to start this debate.
We needed to put it out there.
As passage of the bill looked
more and more likely,
it seemed possible that
Rhonda's son's killers
and Nathan Dunlap
might escape the ultimate
punishment after all.
There's been 7,000 murders in Colorado
in 40 years.
We have executed one person.
In 2009, a bill banning capital punishment
had strong support in
the Colorado legislature.
- The effort to repeal the death penalty
- in Colorado
Came from the fact that
there is a budget crises.
And the death penalty
is a huge money drain.
Now, there's one estimate
that the Nathan Dunlap case
has cost the state 18 million dollars.
It is absolutely more
expensive to handle a death case
because of the time it
takes and the appeals,
going forward for 20 years.
How can we better use resources
to be more effective?
In addition to its high cost,
supporters of the bill argued that
the death penalty was used inconsistently
across the state.
In some counties,
the district attorneys go after
a life without parole sentence.
In some counties they're known for going
after the death penalty.
So should your geography
really determine your fate?
There have been many
multiple murders in Colorado
that have not been
prosecuted as capital cases.
So the question is, why?
When you actually try to probe
in what sense is this justice,
there is no answer other than you know,
an eye for an eye.
This person did this
horrible unspeakable thing,
and we are gonna do something back to them.
Rhonda Fields, who had continued to push
for death sentences
for her son's killers,
spoke out against the bill.
I did not want to see the death penalty
be repealed in our state,
because I think it's a tool that our DAs
need to have access to.
There has to be some
level of accountability
in punishment for people
who commit multiple murders.
In the end, the death penalty ban
passed in the house,
but fell short in the state senate,
by a single vote.
If you look back over the
last decade or so, I'd guess,
about every two years,
the life for killers crowd
convinces some legislators
to run a bill to lower the bar
for the sanctions for heinous murders.
And those invariably fail.
But I don't think that
this is just what do I think
is the appropriate law to have on the books
regarding the death penalty,
this is what the State of Colorado thinks.
By the time the bill failed, both of
Rhonda's son's killers,
Sir Mario Owens and Robert Ray,
had been sentenced to death.
They joined the only other occupant on
Colorado's death row,
Nathan Dunlap.
Critics of the death penalty
noticed troubling similarities.
Owens, Ray, and Dunlap all went to
the same high school.
They're all,
were young African-American men
at the time that they were
charged in their cases.
And they were all charged in the same
exact judicial district.
Why are these three singled out and they're
the only people on death row?
Race is extremely important,
but it's not important
as it relates to this
concept of death penalty.
We happen to have three
African American men
who are on death row for the same thing.
Cold-blooded murder.
And in my view,
it has nothing to do with race.
It has everything to do about murder.
Over the next few years,
Rhonda Fields would continue
to be an important voice
in favor of capital punishment.
Especially because the
Dunlap case was about to
re-emerge in the headlines.
After nearly 20 years of court proceedings,
Nathan's defense team
was running out of options.
In 2012, the Tenth Circuit Court
rejected his final appeal.
And a year later, the Supreme Court
refused to hear his case.
District Attorney George Brauchler,
now in charge of the case,
took decisive action.
We set an execution
date for August of 2013.
Now, Dunlap's last effort to save his life
- is in asking the governor of the
State of Colorado - for clemency.
In 2010, Governor John Hickenlooper Jr,
the popular former mayor of Denver,
had won the governor's
seat in commanding fashion.
This clemency appeal arrives
on John Hickenlooper's desk
as the last hope for Nathan Dunlap's life.
With eyes across the nation
watching Colorado,
Governor Hickenlooper
would be forced to decide
whether Nathan Dunlap should live or die.
In May, 2013, Nathan Dunlap submitted
a petition for clemency to
Governor John Hickenlooper.
It was accompanied by a video.
Nathan's petition
requested that his sentence
be commuted to life in prison
because his mental health issues were never
taken into account at trial.
It also argued that the
death penalty in Colorado
was infrequently used, arbitrarily sought,
and racially biased.
District Attorney George Brauchler's office
sent a counter argument to the governor.
We addressed the mental health issues.
They'd all been raised
before at appellate-court levels.
And now they're being raised yet again
to ask the governor to
act as like the 13th juror,
the super juror.
We also gave him a book of pictures
from the crime scene,
and letters from victims' families.
As part of his process,
the governor met in person
with the victims' families.
Most of the victims' families
were there.
And most of us were very adamant
that he deserved the death penalty.
I explained, you know,
I've remained quiet for, for this long.
I haven't said anything. But now it's time
for me to speak up.
I think Nathan deserves to face his maker.
But some in the room, including victim
Colleen O'Connor's mother,
felt differently.
Our family was the family that
was more against the death penalty
than anybody else.
What I said to he governor was,
"Most of these years I haven't
thought about Nathan Dunlap.
What I've been doing is
I've been trying to heal."
And I said to him,
- "Governor, I wouldn't want to be in your shoes
for anything - because I couldn't say yes."
The governor has a lot of power here
to sign a death warrant
or to commute a sentence.
And so you are really presented
with I think one of
the more difficult things
a human being can be presented with,
is that final decision that
comes down to just you.
On May 22, 2013,
Governor Hickenlooper called
the families to inform
them of his decision.
He then stepped in front of the cameras.
Well, we've decided to
grant a temporary reprieve.
The point of having a temporary
reprieve rather than clemency,
is really out of respect
to the rule of law.
John Hickenlooper
ultimately decides to
temporarily postpone the execution.
Temporarily but indefinitely,
in the sense of, "As long as I'm Governor,
Nathan Dunlap will not be executed."
A reprieve is the last
thing anybody expected.
It's kind of a yes or a no issue,
and a reprieve just defers it.
It's like a time-out. The last reported use
of this reprieve power
that we could find, was in the mid 1890s.
They found him guilty
and sentenced him to death
based on laws that were passed in Colorado,
by Coloradoans,
and remain on the books to this day.
Reaction was swift and vitriolic.
I'm so furious,
I can't tell you.
John Hickenlooper
basically made a mockery
out of the judicial system.
I just felt like he's
driving a tank over us.
This man, he's got to be
a ball-less wonder,
that's all I can think of him.
I mean, w e knew when we made this decision
we were making the hardest decision, right.
That we'd be criticized from both sides.
You try to hear all the voices
and all the perspectives,
but you try to get to justice.
Justice is really dispassionate.
- That's part of the governor's role when
- the governor comes in,
After this whole arc of judicial process
and has to say, "Did we miss anything?
Is this really the right decision?"
There's no question that
this was cold-blooded murder
in the most evil sense.
Even to this day,
I can remember listening in 1993,
to the details of what
happened in Chuck E. Cheese,
and you feel a physical repulsion and,
and a hatred.
It's almost visceral, right?
But that's not when you should
make decisions, and that's not,
you know,
necessarily where justice comes from.
The governor acknowledges that Dunlap's
psychiatric history
played a role in his reprieve.
But his executive order
also calls into question
whether the state should be putting people
to death at all.
Death is different, right? It's final.
And the finality of it is so powerful
- that I think it makes all of us
look at it - in a different sense.
- There's a reason why now 18 states have
- banned the death penalty.
And I wanted the entire
state to have an examination of
the issues around the death penalty.
- Whether it is effective policy
or whether it is - something that
Is broken and really
doesn't function very well.
But by making the reprieve temporary,
the governor left open the possibility that
the next election will
decide Nathan Dunlap's fate.
And the day after his announcement,
one of the governor's
biggest political opponents
declared his candidacy.
If I'm elected governor, hmm, let's see,
twenty minutes after I actually you know,
enter the office
and get a pen in my hand,
I will rescind the order.
When the death penalty
is subjected to an election,
whether a gubernatorial election,
- in this case, with Nathan Dunlap,
- or a ballot measure,
We are saying, essentially, that
the emotions of the mob should rule.
Certain things are simply
not up for a popular vote,
and I believe whether
someone lives or dies,
should be one of those things.
You know, it goes back to public stonings
and lynchings, you know?
We, we don't have mob justice.
In early 2014, a poll showed that
a majority of Coloradans
still supported the death penalty
and disapproved of how the governor
handled the Dunlap case.
We believe in upholding the law,
and the law says execute him.
And it's well deserved.
The governor made it a political issue.
I mean, there is one person
in the state of Colorado who is
- more interested in the governor
being re-elected - than even the governor,
And that's Nathan Dunlap.
Almost all of Hickenlooper's Republican
opponents have announced
their intention to reverse the reprieve
and put Nathan Dunlap to death.
But whether that will provide justice,
is still an open question.
Is executing someone 20 years later
really the kinda retribution
that is making us,
as a society, a better society?
I got a daughter
murdered. I should be going,
"Kill him. Kill him. Kill him."
But you know how I feel?
Nathan rotting where he's rotting
is actually worse than the death penalty.
I think the he deserves
to stay exactly in the hole that he's in.
And to just suffer and suffer
and think about what he did.
that their life was...
In 1993,
Nathan Dunlap killed four people at
a Chuck E. Cheese's restaurant
just outside of Denver, Colorado.
He was sentenced to death.
He is remorseless as he talks about his
murderous decision-making.
Does it bother you that
they're dead, Nathan?
He killed four people. He needs to pay for
it with his life.
Colorado had not executed anyone
since the late 1960s,
but support for Dunlap's death sentence
was overwhelming.
The death penalty, no doubt in my mind...
- Mr. Dunlap should be allowed to come out of the penitentiary...
- only in a pine box
He took lives that he
was not entitled to take,
not for self-defense,
not for self-preservation, nothing.
This man is a mass murderer
and he deserves death.
For 20 years, as Dunlap appealed
his death sentence,
violence continued to strike Colorado.
Masked gunmen walked
into Columbine High School...
... shooting at Century Theaters.
They say there's someone
shooting in the auditorium...
And cries for vengeance increased.
Too many criminals!
It's time all of em die!
Kill all of them, Colorado! And that will
take care of this crap!
In 2013, Nathan Dunlap's execution
order landed on the desk
of Governor John Hickenlooper.
And in an odd twist of fate,
the governor's own
political fortunes
would come to rest on his decision.
We're gonna have an election in 2014, where
one of the questions is,
do we want to kill this one person?
The case sparked a raging debate
over capital punishment
and posed the question,
"What should be done with society's
most heinous criminals?"
- The death penalty encompasses what's
highly emotional issues - for any of us.
It's life and death. It's justice.
All that stuff comes back together,
- on trying to decide what we do with
- the worst of the worst.
There's a body in the water.
He was butchered and murdered.
Many people proclaimed their innocence.
In this case,
there are a number of things that stink.
This man is remorseless.
He needs to pay for it with his life.
The electric chair,
flashed in front of my eyes.
Get a conviction at all costs.
Let the truth fall where it may.
In Aurora, Colorado, on the night
of December 14th, 1993,
evil was about to strike in
the most unlikely of places.
It was Chuck E. Cheese.
It was a family place.
You go there to play games.
You go there to play with your kids.
20-year-old Bobby Stephens, father
to a newborn baby boy,
was working a double shift in
the pizza restaurant's kitchen.
I picked up the Chuck E. Cheese
job as a second job
to help with the income,
and you know,
help with Christmas that was coming.
Um, I'd only been there for two weeks,
but, uh,
it was business as normal.
Also working that night were 19-year-old
Sylvia Crowell,
a student at nearby Metro State College.
Ben Grant,
a 17-year-old high school wrestler,
and Colleen O'Connor, also 17,
a senior at Eaglecrest High School.
Marge Kohlberg, 50 and a mother of two,
was working her first
night alone as manager.
Out in the dining room sat
19-year-old former employee,
Nathan Dunlap.
Nathan Dunlap worked there for a time,
but ultimately he is let go.
He has a bit of an attitude problem
and is a bit of a discipline issue
for the management.
So on the particular night in question,
Nathan Dunlap
goes into that Chuck E. Cheese's
and he orders dinner.
Dunlap plays video games,
plays a shooter video game,
"Hogan's Alley".
Chuck E. Cheese closes.
Dunlap goes into the bathroom,
waits in the bathroom.
He goes to the mirror and he gets
himself psyched up,
looks at himself and tells himself
he can do this.
And he pulls out his
gun and he walks outside
and he starts to shoot people in the head.
- Bobby Stephens was walking inside after
- a smoking break.
As I went back into work is when I started
hearing the gunshots.
I thought somebody dropped something.
- Sylvia Crowell, who had been cleaning
- the salad bar,
Was the first person shot.
She never saw Dunlap coming.
Ben Grant, vacuuming, was killed next.
I heard the next two
shots. Th-the only thing
that came to my mind
was the kids are out
there popping the balloons.
- Colleen O'Connor saw Dunlap approaching.
- She sank to her knees,
Clasped her hands together,
and pleaded for her life.
But Dunlap fired a bullet
through the top of her head.
I was loading some utensils
into the dishwasher.
I had turned around, and Nathan Dunlap
came through the kitchen door.
Right then is when I knew I was in trouble.
And to be honest with you,
the only words that
can come out my mouth was, "Oh,"
And he raised the gun and he shot at me.
The bullet hit Bobby in the jaw,
he fell to the floor.
As he stood there,
I was actually expecting for me
to be shot again
and that would be the end of it. Um,
but I, I played dead.
I, I held as still as I could possibly be.
And it actually worked.
He walked on. And I got
up and I ran out the kitchen.
Dunlap entered the office,
where he forced Marge
Kohlberg to unlock the safe.
After it was open,
he shot Marge in the ear.
As Nathan's gathering the cash, he notices
that Marge is still moving.
And he shoots her in the other ear.
- Bobby Stephens, covered with blood,
stumbled - through the dining room
And fled through a side door,
in search of help.
All I saw was a patio light. And I
stumbled along the way,
but I ran to that light as fast as I could.
Of course, the media picked up on it
very quickly.
Parents are responding.
People are calling each
other. The parking lot is a zoo.
Everyone, the whole community, was just,
"A shooting at Chuck E. Cheese"?
No no no!
The normally festive pizza shop was
transformed into
a scene of carnage, and chaos.
- My best friends are in there. They won't
even say anything - and it drives us crazy!
Police say it's the worst crime
in Aurora in years.
We always had the news on. Always.
For some reason that night we didn't.
Um, the phone rings and it's my sister.
- She said, "Jodie, there's something
on the news - about Chuck E. Cheese's.
- Is that the Chuck E. Cheese
restaurant that, that - Colleen works at?"
So we went down there and they told us to
go into Tony Roma's.
Went into Tony Roma's
and Colleen was not there.
And then I started
shaking. I started shaking.
A friend of mine called, he was on
the police force
and he said, uh,
"There's been a shooting
down at Chuck E. Cheese,"
and he said, "well you better
come down here right away."
A police officer came up and said,
"Your daughter has been
air-lifted to Denver General."
We were told that she was
taken to a hospital.
So, I went and saw that she was breathing,
but that was about it.
The doctors said that
she didn't have a chance.
The doctor said, um,
"She's brain dead."
I didn't know what brain dead meant.
So I looked at the minister
that was there. And I said,
"Is her soul in or out
And he said, um,
"She's with God now."
Outside Chuck E. Cheese's, police
canvassed the crowd for leads.
My partner says, "You're not gonna
believe this."
We just talked to a guy outside
who was telling us who did this.
He said his name is Nathan Dunlap and
he's an ex-employee here.
- And he'd been bragging to people that
he's gonna - come back and kill the manager.
So we had the name right off the bat.
Police had a suspect, but now,
they had to find him.
And once they did,
the story would become more complicated
than they ever could have imagined.
As police in Aurora, Colorado
began investigating
the brutal murders at Chuck E. Cheese's,
they immediately focused on a suspect,
disgruntled ex-employee, Nathan Dunlap.
Dunlap had apparently been
very open about his plans.
Sometime in December, he begins to
tell his compatriots,
his friends,
that he intends to rob Chuck E. Cheese's
and he's going to kill everybody in there.
Following the shooting, concerned parents
rushed to the scene.
Among the crowd was Nathan Dunlap's mother,
Carol.
We started talking with her.
And her views at that point was that,
he didn't do this.
But if you think he did,
let's get this taken care of.
She called him and she told him,
"You need to come home and talk with
the police right now."
They ended up finding
him at his girlfriend's house.
Um, he was having sex with her
and when he got the call
to come back to his house,
which was his mother's home,
he got in the shower.
After scrubbing away any physical evidence,
Nathan was picked up
by police and questioned.
Nathan told them "I
went to Chuck E. Cheese.
I was hungry."
Nathan said he'd learned about the massacre
from the news.
They thought, "For sure he's part of this.
But what do we have to hold him? Nothing."
Shooting survivor, Bobby Stephens,
was unconscious in the hospital,
and unable to help police.
But once they interrogated
Nathan's girlfriend, Tracie,
things changed.
Tracie admitted Nathan
had arrived at her house
with bundles of cash and a gun,
asking her to help dispose of the evidence.
That afternoon,
police took Nathan into custody.
Over the next few weeks,
investigators learned that
before going to Tracie's house,
Nathan visited
two other friends
and bragged about killing people,
execution style,
at Chuck E. Cheese's.
- He told them what he did. He showed them
- the evidence of it.
- He showed them money. He showed
them trinkets - that he'd picked up.
These other people,
they were charged as accessories.
On December 23, 1993,
police charged Nathan Dunlap
with four counts of first-degree murder.
Prosecutors would now need to decide
what punishment to seek.
Life in prison or the death penalty.
For local residents, the murders
at Chuck E. Cheese's
crossed a clear red line.
Enough was enough.
I became the District Attorney of
Denver in June of 1993.
And it was at the beginning
of what later became termed
the "Summer of Violence."
Because of the amount
of pretty high profile crimes
and it was on the 10:00
news almost every night.
An epidemic of violence is
sweeping American children
out of homes and classrooms
and on to our meanest streets.
Cops say they've never
seen anything like it.
Our quality of life is being threatened
when our children can't play in the street.
- I mean, there were children
that were just - just random victims
Because one gang member shot at another.
Our babies! This is our babies!
Just leave them babies alone!
I'll tell you, the public was frightened.
Amplifying nationwide fears,
the media seized upon
a label for a new class of
ultra-violent offenders.
- Criminologists call them
"Super predators," - as Debra says.
Super predators? - Super predators.
The super predator was
about juvenile kids who
had access to guns and
didn't seem to have developed
a conscience over time.
- Police departments in our cities warn of
- a new generation
Of quote, "Super predators",
who have no compunction
about taking human life.
The narrative became about violence,
gang violence, juvenile violence,
and having Nathan
Dunlap kill four people at
a Chuck E. Cheese
just fed right into all of that.
For many, Nathan was the definition
of a "super predator",
and deserved nothing less than death.
He had escalating violence
throughout his teenage years.
He started robbing places with a golf club,
and that
escalated to guns eventually.
We learned that Nathan Dunlap
had been involved in
some very serious crimes.
Prosecutors first tried Nathan for
one of the robberies,
and convicted him.
With a violent crime
now on Nathan's record,
the DA's office announced
they would aggressively
pursue the death penalty.
The Dunlap case arose in Arapahoe County,
which is part of the
18th Judicial District,
which in Colorado is now
and has in the past been madly in love
with the death penalty.
By the time Nathan's
murder trial began in 1996,
the verdict seemed to
be a foregone conclusion.
The trial then, essentially, becomes about
whether what Nathan
Dunlap did is deserving of
the death penalty.
In fact, before trial,
Nathan's defense team
made an offer to the state.
Nathan would plead guilty in exchange for
a life sentence.
It comes down to what's
the appropriate sentence
that we were seeking?
Um, is it appropriate to
plead this to a life in prison?
And... it was not.
At trial, Nathan's lawyers called
almost no witnesses
and offered little defense for his actions.
It took the jury only
three and a half hours
to come to a verdict.
We, the jury, find the Defendant,
Nathan Jerrod Dunlap,
guilty of murder in the first degree...
And during sentencing, the jury
delivered a clear message.
Giving Nathan four death sentences,
one for each victim.
It has to be all 12 jurors saying,
"I personally agree
with a death sentence."
If one person says, "No",
then it's a life sentence.
Though he'd been impassive during trial,
- at the hearing where the judge
officially imposed - the death sentence,
Nathan responded directly
to remarks by the victim's
family members.
Have a seat sir.
Nathan lost it.
He blew up. He was screaming.
I think people in the courtroom
got to see Nathan Dunlap as Nathan Dunlap.
How angered he could be,
how vicious he could be.
When you saw him and
you saw the look on his face,
he was a different person.
But in the years to come,
disturbing new details
would emerge about Nathan Dunlap.
Details that would help
explain his violent actions,
and also weigh heavily
in the governor's
decision whether or not to
put Nathan to death.
Before Nathan Dunlap was sentenced to death
for killing four people at a
Chuck E Cheese's restaurant,
questions began to arise
about his mental state.
There are some outbursts that he has,
in which
psychological valuators
start asking questions,
"Is he fit to stand trial?"
During the run-up to trial,
Nathan's behavior
became erratic,
including violent mood swings,
signs of depression,
and even incidents of spreading feces
over his cell and on himself.
Nathan's sister, Adinea,
arranged to visit him in jail.
When I first saw him
was when I began to think,
"Okay, something is not right."
His eyes were glassy and
his hair was everywhere.
And, uh, he was rambling.
And I was trying to get him to calm down.
Nathan was put on suicide watch,
and moved to a padded cell.
His eyes reminded me
of seeing my mother when
she was in a manic episode.
So, when I saw him, I saw her eyes.
Throughout their childhood,
Adinea and Nathan's mother,
Carol, suffered from
bipolar disorder,
a serious mental illness that
caused extreme mood shifts,
and unpredictable behavior.
Nathan Dunlap's mother would,
at times, berate the children,
wake them up in the middle of the night,
walk around the home naked.
During Carol's manic episodes,
she might experience
hyper sexual behavior,
in addition to severely
abusing her children.
As a child, when you see that,
it was very confusing.
Carol,
whose father and brother were also bipolar,
was in and out of institutions.
My mom would go to the hospital,
we wouldn't really
understand what was going on.
So my dad would take care of us.
The abuse and intimidation from my dad
started very early with Nathan
by grabbing him by the collar,
picking him up.
It wasn't anything for him
to hit him and knock him.
Nathan wasn't the only target
of Jerry Dunlap's rage.
My dad did sexually abuse me,
probably from the time I
was about nine until fourteen.
And there was a time where
Nathan came downstairs
when, some of this was going on.
And, uh,
my dad thought that he saw it and...
I think after that, abuse was really bad.
I mean it was just, it was horrible.
Due to the severity of his crime,
and signs of
mental instability,
before trial, Nathan was sent for testing.
He was brought down to Pueblo
for a psychological evaluation
about whether he was legally insane.
Numerous psychiatrists
at the Colorado Mental Health Institute
observed Nathan,
trying to determine whether he was
competent to stand trial.
We're identifying that
what he's looking like,
is similar to what we've experienced
with my mother,
her brother, and her father.
They spent time observing him very closely
and sent him back with a
report that didn't just say
Nathan Dunlap was competent to stand trial,
but said that he was a malingerer,
a faker, that he tended to
enhance or invent symptomology
consistent with what he wanted to be true.
But state psychiatrists
never had full access to
Nathan's medical records,
or family history.
And the Defense believed
the evaluation was biased.
There's an entire argument over
whether he actually does have
mental health problems,
or whether he's faking in an effort to
make an insanity plea
or avoid the death penalty.
During trial, Nathan's attorneys
never mentioned
his psychiatric evaluations,
or the idea that
he may have been
suffering from a mental
break during the massacre.
- The defense was afraid that if those
charges of - malingering came out,
It would actually inflame
the jury even further
against Nathan Dunlap.
So it's never a factor in the ultimate
death penalty verdict.
Right around this time,
towards the late 90s,
Colorado executed its first prisoner
in about three decades.
- Colorado Department of corrections
inmate, - Gary Davis, was pronounced
Was pronounced dead
at 20:33 this evening...
Gary Lee Davis' execution sent Nathan
into a tailspin.
The guards were really taunting him
that he was next.
And that day, he had a manic break.
He really just started ranting and raving
and had to be hospitalized
shortly thereafter.
Nathan's ongoing psychiatric struggles
brought about a major
shift in his appeals strategy.
Now with a new team of lawyers,
the legal arguments would be based squarely
on Nathan's mental health.
They proceeded to file
over a period of years
his motion for post-conviction relief,
alleging that the trial attorney
was ineffective.
And so, therefore,
he didn't receive a fair trial.
If granted post-conviction relief,
Nathan's sentence could
be converted to life in prison.
And his appeals would
bring up a critical question
that had long surrounded the death penalty.
How mentally ill does a convict need to be,
to avoid being executed?
- There's just no competent,
credible doctors - that will tell you
That his evil conduct was the product of
being in a manic state.
That his conduct was
somehow altered by being bipolar
or suffering from any other mental illness.
The idea that Nathan could escape death
due to mental illness,
enraged the victims' families,
and the sole survivor.
In my head, he had to be crazy.
I mean, how else would a sane person
walk into a child's pizzeria
and shoot five people?
He selfishly took the
lives of four other people.
And I'm a strong believer
in "an eye for an eye".
The fact that the death
penalty was ordered,
that was right. That was the thing to do.
As far as life in prison,
Nathan Dunlap doesn't deserve that.
He deserves to die.
In June 2005, 12 years after
the Chuck E. Cheese's massacre,
another crime occurred in Aurora that would
have a profound effect
on the Nathan Dunlap case
and the death penalty in Colorado.
Javad Marshall-Fields and his fiance,
Vivian Wolfe,
were on their way out to dinner.
Javad had a brilliant smile.
Vivian just loved life.
They were both recent graduates
from Colorado State University.
She had just graduated
with a BA in nutrition,
and my son had just graduated
with a bachelor's degree
in speech communication and rhetoric.
Just three miles from where
the Chuck E. Cheese's
massacre had taken place,
Javad and Vivian were
stopped at a red light
when a car pulled alongside
and someone opened fire.
Gunman attacked this car with bullets,
killing Javad Marshall-Fields
and Vivian Wolfe.
Finding out that I had lost my son, it was
the most devastating event
that I have ever experienced in my life.
I was very, very angry, I was very upset,
and so I went straight
to the police department
and started asking questions.
Javad had witnessed a
friend's murder at a barbecue
the summer before and despite receiving
death threats,
Javad had decided to testify in court
against the accused killer.
He felt like it was the right thing to do,
because
he saw his best friend
get shot down in cold blood.
Javad was murdered five days before
the trial was set to begin.
Months later,
Sir Mario Owens and Robert Ray,
who'd both had been implicated
in the barbecue shooting,
were indicted for Javad
and Vivian's murders.
This case becomes one of
the biggest cases in Colorado,
and the Prosecution in this case,
also in Arapahoe County,
they seek the death penalty.
I think it's pretty clear
why we sought death
in the cases of Sir Mario
Owens and Robert Ray.
Listen,
they murdered a witness to a murder.
It's not just its own killing,
it's an attack on the entire
criminal justice system.
They had killed before. So the,
the thought was,
what do you give them?
Do you give them more time,
more life on top of life?
But the State's case against Owens and Ray
was largely circumstantial,
and getting death wasn't guaranteed.
So Rhonda Fields took an active role
pushing for the ultimate punishment.
I was not a supporter of
the death penalty prior to
the death of my son.
But now,
I believe that there are some crimes
that are so heinous that they deserve
the highest punishment
that the state has to offer.
I've seen mothers of
people who were killed,
who have been taken apart by it
and their lives ruined.
But I've seen people
who did a different thing.
I did not want another family member
to have to experience
the grief and the pain that I did.
And so I, I worked with my
elected official at the time
to pass legislation
to strengthen the state's
witness protection laws.
I was able to pass two
bills just as a citizen,
just working through
my own elected official.
And so from there,
I was tapped to run for office.
And I did. And I won.
Rhonda was elected to represent Aurora
in the state legislature.
She won in a landslide.
Rhonda Fields becomes
a leader on two issues.
One, for gun control.
Very, very, very pro gun control.
Two, she is very pro death penalty.
- During the time Rhonda was pushing for
- death for her son's killers,
Nathan Dunlap's lawyers continued to
work on his appeals.
This was not a chance to
prove that he was innocent,
to, to set Dunlap free.
The focus was on his mental health
and any other mitigating
factors that could've gone into
a jury's decision about whether
he should be put to death.
Nathan Dunlap's attorneys make a pretty
powerful case about bipolarity,
saying that this was not properly explored
in the original case.
By 2006, prison doctors had finally
diagnosed Nathan as bipolar,
and put him on the powerful drug, lithium.
Once medicated,
Nathan's behavior on death row
changed radically,
and he became a model prisoner.
He was an entirely different person
from the young man even that I knew.
So it certainly has to be a part of why
he did what he did.
As Nathan's appeals were being
reviewed by the courts,
a movement to fully ban
capital punishment in Colorado
was picking up speed.
I think that America
has hopelessly entangled
two concepts.
One is justice and the other is vengeance.
And, we need to untangle those.
With polls showing nationwide support for
the death penalty dwindling,
a bill was introduced in the Colorado
state legislature
to outlaw executions.
We just felt strongly that we
needed to start this debate.
We needed to put it out there.
As passage of the bill looked
more and more likely,
it seemed possible that
Rhonda's son's killers
and Nathan Dunlap
might escape the ultimate
punishment after all.
There's been 7,000 murders in Colorado
in 40 years.
We have executed one person.
In 2009, a bill banning capital punishment
had strong support in
the Colorado legislature.
- The effort to repeal the death penalty
- in Colorado
Came from the fact that
there is a budget crises.
And the death penalty
is a huge money drain.
Now, there's one estimate
that the Nathan Dunlap case
has cost the state 18 million dollars.
It is absolutely more
expensive to handle a death case
because of the time it
takes and the appeals,
going forward for 20 years.
How can we better use resources
to be more effective?
In addition to its high cost,
supporters of the bill argued that
the death penalty was used inconsistently
across the state.
In some counties,
the district attorneys go after
a life without parole sentence.
In some counties they're known for going
after the death penalty.
So should your geography
really determine your fate?
There have been many
multiple murders in Colorado
that have not been
prosecuted as capital cases.
So the question is, why?
When you actually try to probe
in what sense is this justice,
there is no answer other than you know,
an eye for an eye.
This person did this
horrible unspeakable thing,
and we are gonna do something back to them.
Rhonda Fields, who had continued to push
for death sentences
for her son's killers,
spoke out against the bill.
I did not want to see the death penalty
be repealed in our state,
because I think it's a tool that our DAs
need to have access to.
There has to be some
level of accountability
in punishment for people
who commit multiple murders.
In the end, the death penalty ban
passed in the house,
but fell short in the state senate,
by a single vote.
If you look back over the
last decade or so, I'd guess,
about every two years,
the life for killers crowd
convinces some legislators
to run a bill to lower the bar
for the sanctions for heinous murders.
And those invariably fail.
But I don't think that
this is just what do I think
is the appropriate law to have on the books
regarding the death penalty,
this is what the State of Colorado thinks.
By the time the bill failed, both of
Rhonda's son's killers,
Sir Mario Owens and Robert Ray,
had been sentenced to death.
They joined the only other occupant on
Colorado's death row,
Nathan Dunlap.
Critics of the death penalty
noticed troubling similarities.
Owens, Ray, and Dunlap all went to
the same high school.
They're all,
were young African-American men
at the time that they were
charged in their cases.
And they were all charged in the same
exact judicial district.
Why are these three singled out and they're
the only people on death row?
Race is extremely important,
but it's not important
as it relates to this
concept of death penalty.
We happen to have three
African American men
who are on death row for the same thing.
Cold-blooded murder.
And in my view,
it has nothing to do with race.
It has everything to do about murder.
Over the next few years,
Rhonda Fields would continue
to be an important voice
in favor of capital punishment.
Especially because the
Dunlap case was about to
re-emerge in the headlines.
After nearly 20 years of court proceedings,
Nathan's defense team
was running out of options.
In 2012, the Tenth Circuit Court
rejected his final appeal.
And a year later, the Supreme Court
refused to hear his case.
District Attorney George Brauchler,
now in charge of the case,
took decisive action.
We set an execution
date for August of 2013.
Now, Dunlap's last effort to save his life
- is in asking the governor of the
State of Colorado - for clemency.
In 2010, Governor John Hickenlooper Jr,
the popular former mayor of Denver,
had won the governor's
seat in commanding fashion.
This clemency appeal arrives
on John Hickenlooper's desk
as the last hope for Nathan Dunlap's life.
With eyes across the nation
watching Colorado,
Governor Hickenlooper
would be forced to decide
whether Nathan Dunlap should live or die.
In May, 2013, Nathan Dunlap submitted
a petition for clemency to
Governor John Hickenlooper.
It was accompanied by a video.
Nathan's petition
requested that his sentence
be commuted to life in prison
because his mental health issues were never
taken into account at trial.
It also argued that the
death penalty in Colorado
was infrequently used, arbitrarily sought,
and racially biased.
District Attorney George Brauchler's office
sent a counter argument to the governor.
We addressed the mental health issues.
They'd all been raised
before at appellate-court levels.
And now they're being raised yet again
to ask the governor to
act as like the 13th juror,
the super juror.
We also gave him a book of pictures
from the crime scene,
and letters from victims' families.
As part of his process,
the governor met in person
with the victims' families.
Most of the victims' families
were there.
And most of us were very adamant
that he deserved the death penalty.
I explained, you know,
I've remained quiet for, for this long.
I haven't said anything. But now it's time
for me to speak up.
I think Nathan deserves to face his maker.
But some in the room, including victim
Colleen O'Connor's mother,
felt differently.
Our family was the family that
was more against the death penalty
than anybody else.
What I said to he governor was,
"Most of these years I haven't
thought about Nathan Dunlap.
What I've been doing is
I've been trying to heal."
And I said to him,
- "Governor, I wouldn't want to be in your shoes
for anything - because I couldn't say yes."
The governor has a lot of power here
to sign a death warrant
or to commute a sentence.
And so you are really presented
with I think one of
the more difficult things
a human being can be presented with,
is that final decision that
comes down to just you.
On May 22, 2013,
Governor Hickenlooper called
the families to inform
them of his decision.
He then stepped in front of the cameras.
Well, we've decided to
grant a temporary reprieve.
The point of having a temporary
reprieve rather than clemency,
is really out of respect
to the rule of law.
John Hickenlooper
ultimately decides to
temporarily postpone the execution.
Temporarily but indefinitely,
in the sense of, "As long as I'm Governor,
Nathan Dunlap will not be executed."
A reprieve is the last
thing anybody expected.
It's kind of a yes or a no issue,
and a reprieve just defers it.
It's like a time-out. The last reported use
of this reprieve power
that we could find, was in the mid 1890s.
They found him guilty
and sentenced him to death
based on laws that were passed in Colorado,
by Coloradoans,
and remain on the books to this day.
Reaction was swift and vitriolic.
I'm so furious,
I can't tell you.
John Hickenlooper
basically made a mockery
out of the judicial system.
I just felt like he's
driving a tank over us.
This man, he's got to be
a ball-less wonder,
that's all I can think of him.
I mean, w e knew when we made this decision
we were making the hardest decision, right.
That we'd be criticized from both sides.
You try to hear all the voices
and all the perspectives,
but you try to get to justice.
Justice is really dispassionate.
- That's part of the governor's role when
- the governor comes in,
After this whole arc of judicial process
and has to say, "Did we miss anything?
Is this really the right decision?"
There's no question that
this was cold-blooded murder
in the most evil sense.
Even to this day,
I can remember listening in 1993,
to the details of what
happened in Chuck E. Cheese,
and you feel a physical repulsion and,
and a hatred.
It's almost visceral, right?
But that's not when you should
make decisions, and that's not,
you know,
necessarily where justice comes from.
The governor acknowledges that Dunlap's
psychiatric history
played a role in his reprieve.
But his executive order
also calls into question
whether the state should be putting people
to death at all.
Death is different, right? It's final.
And the finality of it is so powerful
- that I think it makes all of us
look at it - in a different sense.
- There's a reason why now 18 states have
- banned the death penalty.
And I wanted the entire
state to have an examination of
the issues around the death penalty.
- Whether it is effective policy
or whether it is - something that
Is broken and really
doesn't function very well.
But by making the reprieve temporary,
the governor left open the possibility that
the next election will
decide Nathan Dunlap's fate.
And the day after his announcement,
one of the governor's
biggest political opponents
declared his candidacy.
If I'm elected governor, hmm, let's see,
twenty minutes after I actually you know,
enter the office
and get a pen in my hand,
I will rescind the order.
When the death penalty
is subjected to an election,
whether a gubernatorial election,
- in this case, with Nathan Dunlap,
- or a ballot measure,
We are saying, essentially, that
the emotions of the mob should rule.
Certain things are simply
not up for a popular vote,
and I believe whether
someone lives or dies,
should be one of those things.
You know, it goes back to public stonings
and lynchings, you know?
We, we don't have mob justice.
In early 2014, a poll showed that
a majority of Coloradans
still supported the death penalty
and disapproved of how the governor
handled the Dunlap case.
We believe in upholding the law,
and the law says execute him.
And it's well deserved.
The governor made it a political issue.
I mean, there is one person
in the state of Colorado who is
- more interested in the governor
being re-elected - than even the governor,
And that's Nathan Dunlap.
Almost all of Hickenlooper's Republican
opponents have announced
their intention to reverse the reprieve
and put Nathan Dunlap to death.
But whether that will provide justice,
is still an open question.
Is executing someone 20 years later
really the kinda retribution
that is making us,
as a society, a better society?
I got a daughter
murdered. I should be going,
"Kill him. Kill him. Kill him."
But you know how I feel?
Nathan rotting where he's rotting
is actually worse than the death penalty.
I think the he deserves
to stay exactly in the hole that he's in.
And to just suffer and suffer
and think about what he did.