By Leroy Garcia
Former President of the Colorado State Senate
“But God, who is rich in mercy, because of the great love he had for us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, brought us to life with Christ (by grace you have been saved).”Eph 2:4-5
Faith has been the foundation upon which I have built my entire life. My parents raised my two brothers and me in a Catholic home, which meant that certain values, like a spirit of service and compassion for our neighbors, were instilled in us from a young age.
I grew up serving as an altar boy during various Masses at St. Leander Church in Pueblo and spent summers volunteering at church festivals and bingo. Later in life, when I learned to play the piano, I felt called to share that gift by joining church choirs to play prayerful and beautiful liturgical music–a practice I still maintain to this day. When I started my own family, I knew I wanted to pass the same values and traditions on to my own boys, Jeremiah and Xan. As a father, it has always been important to me that I foster within them their own sense of faith, love of God and commitment to living with integrity, compassion and justice. I did not want these to be simply abstract principles but rather living testaments in their own lives.
My Catholic faith taught me the importance of service to others, which led me to join the United States Marine Corps. I was deployed to Iraq in 2003, where I served as a mortuary affairs specialist. After completing my military service, I became a paramedic. In both of these roles, I witnessed the fragility and resilience of life. As a paramedic responding to calls, my job was to offer medical assistance, as well as compassion, dignity, respect, hope and comfort to my patients in their moments of need. When witnessing these incredibly difficult situations, I leaned heavily on God and his divine plan for every individual. I am certain that I would not have been able to fulfill the obligations of either of these jobs were it not for my deep faith.
I was blessed to have the opportunity to run for public office and served as a city councilor, a member of the Colorado House of Representatives, a State Senator and ultimately the Senate President of Colorado. During my tenure on Council and in the legislature, we faced several difficult political battles, but one of the most intense was the effort to repeal the death penalty. It was an emotionally charged and complicated topic for everyone involved, including me. My family history, particularly our own experiences with violence and loss, made the debate over the death penalty deeply personal.
In 1988, my cousin was working at a hotel in Pueblo when he was brutally murdered. In addition to the devastating loss of someone we loved, my family had to grapple with the fact that the murderer was a serial killer and my cousin’s killing had been random. As we reckoned with the death of our loved one, my family leaned heavily on God and prayer to guide us. The intense and, at times, overwhelming feelings of grief didn’t overshadow the teachings of our faith: that every life is worthy and forgiveness is possible. We knew that more violence would not lessen our loss and that healing our own wounds would require mercy and forgiveness.
I carried this loss, as well as my experiences in Iraq and as a paramedic, with me in elected office. When the debate around the death penalty began, I truly understood the pain and reasoning I heard from colleagues, advocates and community members who wanted to keep capital punishment in Colorado. They had seen tragedy firsthand, and I would never diminish their pain and lived experience. Often, I prayed for and with them.
The debate around the potential repeal of the death penalty illuminated some other factors that I had to consider as well: the people who remained on death row were all unequivocally guilty of truly heinous crimes. Prosecutors voiced concerns that abolishing the death penalty could harm their ability to extract confessions and secure convictions. Coloradans were divided nearly equally on either side of the issue. The consequences of this deeply personal and politically fraught debate could not have been more serious.
While I have the utmost respect for those who advocated for the death penalty and sometimes found myself resonating with their perspective, I could not turn my back on my faith and all it had taught me. I knew I was bestowed with the divine responsibility to choose mercy over retribution and to take action that honors our belief that no person is beyond redemption. Voting to keep the death penalty in Colorado would have been incompatible with the most sacred tenets of my Catholic faith.
I decided the best way forward was to bring people together as gently and compassionately as possible. After countless difficult conversations, we moved people one by one until we had secured the votes we needed to finally abolish the death penalty in Colorado.
The journey to repeal the death penalty in Colorado was long and arduous. I had to confront my own fears and doubts, engage in difficult conversations and ultimately find the strength to stand firm in my convictions, even when they were politically unpopular. None of this would have been possible without my faith to anchor me. It reminded me that lawmakers’ work is about much more than just changing the law: it is about affirming the sacred value of every individual, no matter the severity of the circumstances.
Life is filled with moments that test your commitment to your faith. My Catholic upbringing never failed to give me the strength I needed to overcome even the most severe challenges. Ultimately, I know that truly living these values requires me to be courageous in protecting them. The effort to repeal the death penalty and the painfully complicated debate surrounding it was one of those tests.
Thanks to the tireless work and unwavering courage of countless people, Colorado’s death penalty was abolished in 2020.
There are many reasons to oppose the death penalty, and my personal reason happened to be my faith, which showed me that every person, even those who have committed heinous acts, has a life that is sacred. In this debate and so many others, I am immensely grateful to have been guided by a faith that commands me always to choose mercy and forgiveness over retribution.
Leroy M. Garcia is a 6th generation southern Coloradan, currently working as a Chief of Staff for Rural Business Cooperative Services at the United States Department of Agriculture. Before President Biden appointed him to this position, Garcia was the Democratic State Senator for Colorado Senate District 3 (Pueblo County) and was elected in 2019 to serve as the first Latino Senate President in Colorado’s history. The views presented are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Department of Agriculture or the U.S. Government.
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