The crime that consigned Marion Jetton to a sentence of nearly a century in prison wasn’t all that salacious or particularly heinous.

Convicted killers have received far less prison time in Colorado, where the sentencing guidelines allow a person guilty of second-degree murder to be sentenced to as little as eight years in prison.

A jury convicted Jetton of being the leader of a six-person theft and forgery ring that used fake IDs and forged checks to steal modest amounts from grocery stores and banks. Testimony showed the sum total of Jetton’s theft, which he maintains fed an addiction to cocaine, was about $8,800.

But Jetton, then 42, had lived a life of petty crime, which meant he fell under Colorado’s habitual offender statute. Under that law, the minimum prison sentence that could be imposed was 96 years — a punishment even the judge who sentenced him in 2004 questioned, noting it was “a case in which nobody was injured, maimed or murdered.”

Now, after serving 13 years in prison, Jetton could be eligible for release from prison as early as next month. His reduced sentence is due in large part to a changing of the guard at the Denver District Attorney’s Office. The new top prosecutor, Beth McCann, agreed to intervene after hearing pleas from defense lawyers who said Jetton should not die in prison because he had never been violent.

Read the full story at The Denver Post.

Marion Jetton

Marion Jetton