This is an archived article and the information in the article may be outdated. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated.

DENVER — Legislation that seeks to repeal Colorado’s death penalty was introduced in the House of Representatives Friday afternoon, just as FOX31 Denver first reported last week that it would be.

The introduction of the legislation comes the same day as Maryland’s legislature passed its own bill to repeal capital punishment there; and it marks the end of another dramatic week at the Colorado Capitol that saw tense debates about gun control laws, civil unions, comprehensive sex education in schools and how to prosecute those who commit crimes against pregnant women that result in the loss of unborn children.

With so many emotional, controversial issues already on the table, proponents of the death penalty repeal measure thought long and hard about whether or not to introduce this bill during the 2013 session.

But lawmakers have decided to push ahead with the proposal, issuing a press release Friday afternoon after the bill’s official introduction that listed 30 relatives of murder victims who now support the death penalty’s repeal.

The legislation, House Bill 1264, will first be heard in the House.

“The death penalty is a failed public policy,” the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Claire Levy, D-Boulder, said. “It fails on legal grounds in that it is arbitrarily applied, it fails to recognize we make mistakes, it fails to save taxpayer dollars, and it fails to give  victims the swift legal resolution they deserve. That’s why so many states are moving away from the death penalty.”

Rep. Jovan Melton, D-Aurora, is also sponsoring the legislation in the House; the Senate sponsors are Senate Majority Leader Morgan Carroll, D-Aurora, and Sen. Lucia Guzman, D-Denver.

The legislation proposed will not be retroactive; as a result, Colorado’s three current death row inmates, two of whom are there for murdering the son of Rep. Rhonda Fields, D-Aurora, and the third, Nathan Dunlap, who’s due to die later this year, would not have their death sentences nullified as a result of the bill’s potential passage.

James Holmes, the suspected gunman in the Aurora theater shooting last year, also could be charged with the death sentence for the murder of 12 people; the legislation would only ban capital punishment as a sentencing option for those convicted of crimes committed after July 2013.

The bill is likely to be heard by its first House committee next week.