Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper is under fire for his decision to block the execution of man convicted of massacring four people at a Chuck E. Cheese in Aurora, Colo., two decades ago.

The Democrat has vowed not to sign a death warrant for Nathan Dunlap as long as he's in office, even though he declined to back an outright repeal of capital punishment two months ago.

Hickenlooper's decision on Dunlap — a day before lawyers for Aurora movie-theater massacre suspect James Holmes were due in court to challenge the death-penalty statute — infuriated some victims' relatives and law-enforcement officials.

"He should die," former Aurora Police Officer Dan Jones, who was the first to arrive at Chuck E. Cheese the night of Dec. 14, 1993, told NBC station KUSA.

"What he did was horrific. And now 20 years later...the governor passes the buck."

Bob Crowell, whose 19-year-old daughter Sylvia was one of those killed, called Hickenlooper a "chicken governor."

"We've waited an awful long time," Crowell said after a heated conference call with the governor on Wednesday. "It's a little like carrying a knife in my back. Today, that night was severely twisted."

Colorado has had the death penalty since 1977, although only one person has been put to death since then and there are just three on Death Row.

Helen H. Richardson / AP

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper says he will block the execution of convicted Chuck E. Cheese massacre killer Nathan Dunlap for as long as he is in office.

Dunlap, who ambushed the restaurant workers after he was fired, was scheduled for an Aug. 18 execution. Hickenlooper signed an executive order that will remain in effect at least until his first term ends in 2015.

The governor is running for re-election, and his critics accused him of trying to have it both ways on the divisive death penalty issue.

"It's not a perfect decision and I recognize that," he told KUSA. "But I think the reasons we are doing it this way override that lack of closure [for the victims' families]."

Hickenlooper said he did not support a bill to repeal capital punishment earlier in the year because he did not want to force that decision on his constituents.

At the same time, he said, he could not in good conscience let Dunlap be put to death when studies show execution is not a deterrent to crime and is often applied inconsistently.

“It’s hard to defend the death penalty," he said.

Dunlap's lawyers had asked Hickenlooper to commute his sentence to life in prison without parole, but he declined to do that, leaving open the possibility for his successor to overturn the executive order and send the 39-year-old to the death chamber.

Araphoe County District Attorney George Brauchler said Hickenlooper's move would please few people.

"One person will go to bed with smile on his face and that's Nathan Dunlap," Brauchler said.

Brauchler is seeking the death penalty for the man accused in Aurora's bloodiest crime, the murder of 12 people at a midnight "Batman" screening last July.

James Holmes' lawyers will be in court Thursday to challenge the capital punishment statue on the grounds that it makes an insanity plea untenable.

They said that certain conditions Holmes must accept to mount an insanity defense would hamper their ability to argue he should be spared death during the sentencing phase if he's convicted.

This story was originally published on Thu May 23, 2013 9:01 AM EDT

A woman who planned to testify as a character witness for Jodi Arias in a bid to spare her life decided Monday that she couldn’t go through with it, saying she had received death threats and was deeply conflicted about the case.

Lawyers for Arias, who was convicted earlier this month of the frenzied murder of an ex-lover, quickly asked for a mistrial in the sentencing phase on the grounds that a witness had been intimidated. The judge denied the request.

The potential witness, Patricia Womack, is a childhood friend of Arias who planned to testify about Arias’ abusive childhood. Besides the threats, she said that her heart went out to the family of Travis Alexander, whom Arias was convicted of killing.

“I couldn’t do it,” she told NBC News in an email. “I feel there is so much good in Jodi to be saved but then also someone’s dear life was taken.”

Court abruptly adjourned for the day after lawyers for Arias said they had no witnesses to call. It remained possible that jurors in the sentencing phase would hear from Arias herself, perhaps Tuesday.

Karen DeSoto, a defense lawyer and legal analyst for MSNBC, said there were ways of overcoming Womack’s feelings of intimidation.

“If she really is scared, then turn the cameras off,” she said. “There’s a lot of ways to cure whether somebody can testify. Clear the courtroom.”

After the judge, Sherry Stephens of Maricopa County Superior Court, denied the mistrial request, lawyers for Arias asked to be taken off the case. The judge denied that request as well.

Arias, 32, was found guilty May 8 of first-degree murder. She admitted to killing Alexander after a day of sex. She shot him in the face, stabbed him more than 20 times and slit his throat ear to ear. At trial, she claimed self-defense.

Jurors, after hearing tearful statements from Alexander’s brother and sister, ruled that Arias had been “especially cruel,” a finding that made her eligible for the death penalty under Arizona law. The same jury is considering whether to sentence her to death.

Arias was briefly put on suicide watch after the conviction. Hours after the verdict, she told an Arizona TV station that she would rather get death than life and that death was the “ultimate freedom.”

Sheriff’s officials said Monday that Arias had been returned to the regular population at the county women’s jail after spending five days on suicide watch in a psychiatric ward, The Arizona Republic reported.

The Arias case, with its lurid details, has been widely followed. Arias dyed her hair, turned off her phone and drove 1,000 miles from California to Alexander’s home in Arizona on June 4, 2008.

Arias and Alexander had broken up after an affair. Arias testified that she had acted out Alexander’s every fantasy and even converted to his Mormon faith, but he nonetheless broke up with her and began dating — chastely, he told her — other women.

According to the testimony of some of Alexander’s friends, Arias did not take the breakup well, and began stalking her former beau and slashed his tires. Her extreme jealousy culminated in Alexander’s gruesome murder, the prosecutor argued.

Alastair Jamieson of NBC News contributed to this report.

Related: Jodi Arias should die, victim's brother and sister tell Phoenix jury

This story was originally published on Mon May 20, 2013 11:48 AM EDT

Reed Saxon / AP

Judy Clarke, a defense lawyer whose high-profile clients include Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, Olympic bomber Eric Rudolph and Tucson shooter Jared Lee Loughner, speaks at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles on April 26.

If he is convicted, the surviving Boston Marathon bombing suspect may be spared a trip to death row thanks to the addition of a criminal defense whiz — with a history of securing life sentences — to his legal team.

Judy Clarke joined Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's defense team on Monday. She has represented some of the most infamous American criminals in recent history: Jared Loughner, who killed six people and seriously wounded former U.S. congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in 2011; Susan Smith, the South Carolina mother who drowned her two children in 1994; Eric Rudolph, who pleaded guilty to being the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bomber; Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber; and Zacarias Moussaoui, a convicted Sept. 11 conspirator. 

All of those defendants were handed life sentences instead of the death penalty for their crimes. Now Tsarnaev's legal team hopes to keep Clarke's streak alive by having her join his case.

"It's no accident that she's the go-to defender in these kinds of cases," said Gerald H. Goldstein, a San Antonio-based defense lawyer and the former president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, who has known Clarke for about 30 years. "She makes people want to do the right thing, for the right reason. And that's a tough job."

Often, the "right thing" is for her defendants to acknowledge their crimes, avoid a jury trial and, most importantly, continue living. 

"They're looking into the lens of life in prison in a box," Clarke said at a legal conference in Los Angeles on Friday, The Associated Press reported. "Our job is to provide them with a reason to live."

She also offered a glimpse into what has drawn her into what she called the "black hole, the vortex" of death penalty cases since she first began working on them 18 years ago, when she represented Smith.

"I got a dose of understanding human behavior, and I learned what the death penalty does to us," she said. "I don't think it's a secret that I oppose the death penalty."

Clarke, 60, doesn't seek out big death-penalty cases; they find her, Goldstein said. Clarke rarely returns phone calls from reporters, and calls to her San Diego office went unanswered on Tuesday. 

The addition of Clarke to Tsarnaev's team offers clues as to how the defense strategy may play out when the time comes.

"They are not going to put on a jihadi defense," Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz told the AP, adding that Clarke's presence shows "they are going to litigate hard against the death penalty." 

"The client wants to live, and he wants to avoid the death penalty," Dershowitz said of the only surviving brother in the Boston Marathon bombings. "They are not going to say, 'I want to die, I want to join my brother.'"

Clarke has been in private practice in San Diego for years, working with her husband, law professor Thomas "Speedy" Rice, but she still takes public-defender assignments.

She is a native of Asheville, N.C., who grew up in a conservative Republican household, according to The New York Times. She got her undergrad degree from Furman University in South Carolina in 1974, followed by her law degree from the University of South Carolina in 1977. She moved cross-country to practice law the following year, and has spent most of her career in California and the Pacific Northwest.

"You're going to have a hard time finding somebody, even those that are her opponents, who doesn't respect her. Some people may not like her, but she commands respect," Goldstein said.

Clarke's skill in the courtroom lies in her ability to empathize with clients, even when they are being charged with horrific crimes, say colleagues.

"She's a genius. She's among the smartest, most thoughtful people you'll ever meet," said Todd Maybrown, a criminal defense attorney in Seattle who has known Clarke since the early 1990s. "She's very intense and cares very deeply about the law and her clients."

Added Goldstein: "She does as much in terms of humanizing the judge and the jury and the other lawyers as she does humanizing her clients. There's a reason people can identify with her." 

Clarke's rise to prominence began when she defended Smith, who was on trial for drowning her two young children. A law school classmate of Clarke's, David Bruck, invited her to join the defense team.

Clarke and Bruck nearly crossed paths again: While Tsarnaev, the 19-year-old Boston bombing suspect, recovers from his bullet wounds in a prison hospital bed, his public defender, Miriam Conrad, asked a Boston federal court to appoint two death penalty experts to the case: Clarke and Bruck, who is now a law professor at Washington and Lee University, according to the AP. 

U.S. Magistrate Judge Marianne Bowler rejected the request to let Bruck join the team, but agreed to appoint Clarke, who will join the three federal public defenders already assigned to Tsarnaev's case.

Clarke has served as the head of federal public defenders offices in Idaho, eastern Washington and San Diego, served as president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and argued before the Supreme Court.

Clarke's experiences with her clients has led to her becoming an opponent of the death penalty, Bruck told The New York Times in 2011.

“Judy would probably say if the public saw everything she sees, it would look at the client or the case differently,” he said.

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• Full coverage of the Boston Marathon tragedy on NBCNews.com

Prosecutors and lawyers for surviving Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev have begun very early discussions about a possible deal, in which he would cooperate in exchange for avoiding the death penalty, legal sources said Monday.

As details of the nascent negotiations emerged, a lawyer who has helped other high-profile suspects cut deals that kept them out of the execution chamber got permission to join Tsarnaev's defense team.

Attorney Judy Clarke's past clients have included Unabomber Ted Kaczynski and, more recently, Jared Loughner, who was spared facing the death penalty for the Tucson, Ariz., shooting that nearly killed former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords in 2011.

Tsarnaev, 19, is charged with using a weapon of mass destruction for the April 15 bombing that killed three and wounded 176 in Boston and could face the death penalty.

The suspect's older brother and accused accomplice, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was killed in a firefight with police, and investigators are trying to determine if anyone else was involved.

Law enforcement officials said they took a DNA sample Monday from Tamerlan's wife, Katherine Russell Tsarnaev, to compare to female DNA found on a piece of pressure cooker used to make one of the bombs.

The wife has said she had no inkling of her husband's plans, and officials cautioned that the DNA on the cooker could have come from a worker at the store where it was purchased.

AP Photo/The Lowell Sun & Robin Young

Boston bombing suspects Tamerlan (left) and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

The FBI is also looking into whether the older brother met with two men considered radical Muslims during a 2012 trip to the Russian republic of Dagestan. Both men — William Plotnikov and Makmud Nidal — were killed last year in Russian operations.

The spotlight has also been trained on the Tsarnaevs' mother, Zubeidat, who was caught on a Russian wiretap talking to Tamerlan about jihad, U.S. officials said.

That conversation led the Russians to ask the FBI to look into Tamerlan in 2011. He and his mother were put into a U.S. terrorism database, but no further action was taken.

While some members of Congress have faulted the Russians for not giving the U.S. more explicit details about the mother, officials in Washington said she spoke so generally about jihad that it's not likely the information would have influenced the outcome of the 2011 probe.

Before he was given a Miranda warning and stopped talking, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev told investigators that he and his brother were motivated by religion but acted alone, without help from any overseas terrorist organization.

But law enforcement officials believe someone may have carried items out of his dorm room at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth a few days after the bombings and they searched local landfills for them. So far nothing has turned up, but investigators are still looking in garbage containers.

Three federal public defenders were appointed to represent Tsarnaev, and they asked that two death penalty specialists be added to the team. The court approved Clarke but said the request for a second lawyer, David Bruck of the Washington and Lee University School of Law, was premature since Tsarnaev has not been indicted yet.

Wounded by police during his capture,Tsarnaev was transferred last week from a private Boston hospital to a federal medical prison in central Massachusetts.

Related:

• Russians to US: Bombing suspect, mom discussed jihad
• Congressman: Bombing suspects may have had foreign help

Mike Cardew / Akron Beacon Journal Pool via AP

Richard Beasley smiles at his sister Sherri Beasley as he is wheeled into Summit County Common Pleas Judge Lynne S. Callahan's courtroom in Akron, Ohio, on Feb 27, 2013.

Faced with a jury’s recommendation to hand down the death penalty, an Ohio judge will now decide on Thursday, April 4 the fate of the triple killer who lured his victims with Craigslist job offers.

A sentence was expected Tuesday afternoon for 53-year-old Richard Beasley, but Judge Lynn Callahan in Akron said unavoidable complications forced officials to move the sentencing to a later date. 

Beasley, a self-styled street preacher, was convicted last week, found guilty on 26 counts, including nine counts of aggravated murder.

While the jury for the case voted and urged Beasley’s execution, Callahan has the option of reducing the sentence to life in prison. That option could include a chance for parole after 25 or 30 years.

Beasley killed three men and shot another who responded to bogus ads on Craigslist that promised a job as a caretaker on a large farm in Noble County, Ohio. One was killed near Akron and two others were killed at the southeast Ohio farm.

The slain men were Ralph Geiger, 56, of Akron; David Pauley, 51, of Norfolk, Va.; and Timothy Kern, 47, of Massillon. Geiger and Pauley were both buried in shallow graves in a wooded area in Caldwell, Ohio.

The survivor, Scott Davis, testified that he heard the click of a gun as he walked in front of Beasley at the reputed job site. Davis, who was shot in the arm, said he knocked the weapon aside, fled in to the woods and tipped police.

Beasley's teenage co-defendant Brogan Rafferty, who was 16 at the time of the crimes in 2011, was sentenced by the same judge last year to life without parole. Because of his age, he wasn't eligible for the death penalty.

In an opening statement during the sentencing phase of the trial last week, prosecutor Jonathan Baumoel said the "enormous" weight of Beasley's crimes should be considered in deciding on life or death.

Beasley didn't take the stand at the trial's sentencing phase to appeal for mercy. His attorneys instead called a friend of Beasley, a psychologist and his mother, who begged jurors to spare her son's life.  

Beasley had previously served several years in prison on a burglary conviction. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Begging to have jurors spare her son's life, the mother of a triple killer who lured his victims with Craigslist job offers testified Wednesday that he had a troubled childhood and suffered physical and sexual abuse.

"I love Richard with all my heart," a teary-eyed Carol Beasley testified during the sentencing phase of the trial of her son, 53-year-old Richard Beasley. He was convicted last week of killing three men and wounding a fourth, all lured with offers of farmhand jobs in southeast Ohio in 2011.

But despite the emotional plea, the jury on Wednesday evening recommended the death penalty for Beasely. Other options were life in prison without the chance of parole or life with a chance for parole after 25 or 30 years.

Judge Lynne Callahan, who has final say in Beasley's fate, said on Wednesday she will sentence him on March 26.

Beasley's co-defendant, then 16 years old, is too young to face the death penalty. Brogan Rafferty was sentenced to life in prison without the chance of parole on his conviction last year.

In an opening statement at the sentencing part on Wednesday, prosecutor Jonathan Baumoel said the "enormous" weight of Beasley's crimes should be considered in deciding on life or death.

The defense responded by calling witnesses to portray Beasley sympathetically. As his mother testified, Beasley slumped forward, his chin on his chest and his right hand covering his eyes.

She described a difficult childhood for her son, with a verbally and physically abusive stepfather whom Carol Beasley characterized as a mean drunk.

She testified that she learned only within the past year that her son had been sexually abused by neighborhood youngsters when he was a boy. She had known that the boys had forced him to remove his pants in a large drainage pipe but hadn't known about the abuse at the time, she said.

Phil Masturzo / AP file

Carol Beasley, mother of convicted murderer Richard Beasley, leaves the Summit County Courthouse on Tuesday, March 12, 2013, in Akron, Ohio. Richard Beasley was found guilty with aggravated murder in the killing two men from Ohio and one from Norfolk, Va. by luring them with Craigslist job offers.

"I always felt there was much more than he told me," she testified. Her son apparently kept the abuse secret out of fear he would be held responsible for it, the mother said.

Her first husband neglected Richard and her, Carol Beasley testified, and her second husband broke dishes and a window while drinking and whipped Richard as a toddler.

"Richard was very mistreated by him," she testified.

Carol Beasley testified that Richard and the couple's own two daughters would be put to bed early and sometimes were sent to relatives for the weekend to avoid contact with the father.

"Everybody was afraid when he came home," she said.

The defense also called a psychologist, John Fabian, who testified that Beasley suffers from depression, alcohol abuse, low self-esteem and a feeling of isolation, all possible results of a troubled, abusive childhood.

"These are all potential mitigating factors" in favor of leniency, Fabian testified.

Fabian said Beasley's issues should be considered in multi-generational terms involving him and his family life. "This is all his personality development," he said.

One of Beasley's victims was killed near Akron, and the others were shot at a southeast Ohio farm during bogus job interviews.

The slain men were Ralph Geiger, 56, of Akron; David Pauley, 51, of Norfolk, Va.; and Timothy Kern, 47, of Massillon.

The survivor, Scott Davis, testified that he heard the click of a gun as he walked in front of Beasley at the reputed job site. Davis, who was shot in an arm, knocked the weapon aside, fled into the woods and tipped police.

Beasley, who returned to Ohio from Texas in 2004 after serving several years in prison on a burglary conviction, testified that he met with Davis and Davis had pulled a gun in retaliation for Beasley serving as a police informant.

Patrick Semansky / AP

Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, center, speaks at a rally in support of repealing the state's death penalty in Annapolis, Md., on Jan. 15. O'Malley argued that the death penalty is a waste of resources that could be better used to fight crime in more productive ways.

Maryland will become the 18th state to ban the death penalty.

A bill to outlaw capital punishment cleared the state House of Delegates on Friday and has already been approved by the Senate. Gov. Martin O’Malley, a Democrat, has said that he will sign it.

O’Malley told reporters after the vote that the ban validates a “core belief that we share in the dignity of every human being.”

“Overwhelming evidence tells us that the death penalty does not work,” he said earlier in the day on Twitter. He added: “Especially in tough times, if a public policy is expensive and does not work, then we should stop doing it.”

The vote in the House was 82-56.

Maryland has five men on death row; the new legislation would allow the governor to commute their sentences. The state last executed someone in 2005. It has put five people to death since reinstating the death penalty in 1978.

The House of Delegates rejected more than 20 proposed amendments to the ban, most proposed by Republicans, including some that would have allowed the death penalty in certain cases, such as child murders and the killing of police officers.

The other 17 states that have outlawed the death penalty are mostly in the Midwest and Northeast. The District of Columbia has also banned it. Maryland is the sixth state in six years to enact such a ban, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

O’Malley has been mentioned as a possible Democratic presidential candidate in 2016.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

REUTERS/Texas Department of Criminal Justice/Handout

Carl Henry Blue is seen in an undated handout photo from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. The state of Texas is preparing to execute Blue for killing his former girlfriend in 1994 by dousing her with gasoline and setting her on fire.

The state of Texas on Thursday executed a man convicted of killing his former girlfriend in 1994 by dousing her with gasoline and setting her on fire.

Carl Henry Blue, 48, was put to death by lethal injection at the state penitentiary at Huntsville, said the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. He was pronounced dead at 6:56 p.m. local time.

Blue was convicted of killing ex-girlfriend Carmen Richards-Sanders, 38, in her apartment in Bryan, Texas, as she was getting ready to leave for work.

His execution was the first this year in Texas, which leads the United States in executions, and the second in the country. Robert Gleason, 42, was electrocuted by the state of Virginia on January 16.