The 2008 movie, The Life Penalty, honors former Colorado Public Defender David Wymore, who made the state defender's death penalty defense division one of the most successful in the nation through his creation of The Colorado Method, an approach to jury selection in which the defense attempts to life-qualify jurors.

How did a rebel public defender from Boulder, Colorado, throw a monkey wrench into America’s "death machine"? Slip into a juror’s seat as David Wymore and other nationally recognized criminal defense attorneys bring their fight against the death penalty to the front line: the courtroom.

Casting a revelatory and often uncomfortable light on our justice system, The Life Penalty shakes the ethical and moral foundations of capital punishment in the contemporary United States.

You can watch the trailer here.

Holmes trial is now set for Feb. 2014. In May, 2013, the University of Colorado will be host to Wymore (and NACDL's and the SCHR) death penalty training program at which the Colorado Method, which is widely credited for lowering Colorado's death row population, will be taught to capital defenders.

Join NACDL, the Southern Center for Human Rights, and the University of Colorado School of Law for this unique hands-on training program. Participants will work with David Wymore, the originator of this method of capital jury selection, and a faculty of masters of capital voir dire for two and a half packed days to learn, refine and master the art and science of death penalty jury selection.

The program teaches the Colorado Method of capital voir dire by using a combination of lecture, demonstration, and small group exercises involving real jurors. This proven method has nearly emptied Colorado’s death row and has saved capital defendants across the country. Students will learn the core Supreme Court jurisprudence and how to use it to make the judge let you ask what you need to ask.

The main components of the Colorado Method :

• Ranking the prospective jurors on a 1-7 scale from, "Would never give the death penalty," to, "would always give the death penalty," and working to keep as many low-scoring jurors as possible.
• Teaching the jurors that a penalty phase deliberation is not a fact-based argument, but is instead based on one’s personal moral judgment requiring each juror to answer the question, “Who do I kill?”
• Teaching the more death-oriented jurors that they should respect a vote for life from other jurors and not try to talk them out of it.
• Teaching the life-giving jurors that their vote for life should be respected, that they should not let other jurors talk them out of it, and that the state is always satisfied with a life sentence.
• Teaching defense counsel that they need to "come into conflict" with jurors in order to get them to reveal their true feelings about the death penalty, something many lawyers are uncomfortable doing.

There is no question that Holmes will face an uphill battle in conservative Arapahoe County. As is the case everywhere, only death-qualified jurors can be selected to serve. Courts must exclude potential jurors who do not believe that death is an appropriate sanction in any case. Former Supreme Court Justice Stevens pointed out the pro-death bias this causes:

Most judges who preside at capital trials are elected, creating a "subtle bias in favor of death" -- since it's hard to face reelection having given a break to a killer. The jury selection process does the same. Prosecutors question jurors at length about their willingness to impose death; this creates an imbalance in juries, when prosecutors strike those with anxiety about capital punishment, and it creates an atmosphere “in which jurors are likely to assume that their primary task is to determine the penalty for a presumptively guilty defendant.”

Brauchler and his crew, which include a recently hired experienced death penalty prosecutor from Colorado Springs, may be no match for the Colorado public defender's death unit.

There are only 3 inmates on Colorado's death row. All are African-American and were charged and convicted in Arapahoe County. No one has been executed in Colorado since 1997. If Holmes is sentenced to death, it will be decades, if ever, before the sentence is carried out.

Brauchler said today that justice for James Holmes is death. He's wrong. It is merely revenge.

As the Supreme Court has said, "Death is different" from every other form of punishment, requiring additional safeguards for the defendant. Coloradans are about to relive just how different -- and expensive-- it is.

Brauchler's decision does not preclude a future plea agreement for life without parole which is what the defense has been seeking. The Aurora Sentinel and the Denver Post have both written editorials as to why life without parole is a better solution in the Holmes case, for everyone involved.

A bill introduced in the Colorado House in February to repeal the death penalty (which would have been prospective and not applicable to Holmes) has died.

A sentence to life without parole is a death sentence. Either way, Holmes would not leave prison except in a pine box. Unfortunately, the entire state will now pay for Brauchler's ill-advised decision to seek the death penalty.