USA - Colorado. Gov. Hickenlooper says he could decide to grant "full clemency" to Dunlap.

If Colorado death row inmate Nathan Dunlap's case becomes too political, Gov. John Hickenlooper says he could decide to grant "full clemency" before he leaves office. That's the upshot of an interview given by Hickenlooper to CNN earlier this year. Opponents characterize the governor's comments as a political threat, but the Hickenlooper campaign points out that the governor was asked to comment on a hypothetical scenario in which he faced an opponent who campaigned aggressively on a promise of executing Dunlap. Hickenlooper, a Democrat who faces reelection in the fall, adds that he has no current plans to revisit his decision to grant a temporary reprieve to the death row inmate. An audio recording of CNN's interview, made by the governor's office, was obtained in a public information request from conservative group Complete Colorado. As 9NEWS has explored before, the governor's decision to grant a temporary reprieve to murderer Nathan Dunlap comes with an odd political wrinkle: it essentially puts a man's life up for a vote because the governor's challenger, Republican Bob Beauprez, says he would carry out the execution. The CNN interview took place before Bob Beauprez even won the GOP primary. The interviewer was particularly interested in this political aspect, referencing (unsuccessful primary candidate) Tom Tancredo's hard line on the death penalty. The governor was asked how he'd respond to a campaign that ran on a platform of "elect me, I'm going to kill this guy." "If that becomes a political issue within that context in the campaign," Hickenlooper replied. "Obviously there's a period of time between the election and the end of the year where individuals can make decisions such as the governor can." Later, the governor was asked to elaborate on what he meant by this and explained that he could envision commuting the death sentence for Dunlap if it became overly politicized. "You don't want to go into too much detail in these things, but the issue that a political campaign would make a human life into, you know, a political football is unsettling. And I think would backfire on them tremendously on any candidate who did that. And if they did do that and somehow it won, there are obviously remedies that the governor can do. I could do a full clemency between election day and the end of the year. I mean there are a number of different opportunities to make sure that doesn't happen. Again, human life should not be a political football." When he announced the decision in 2013, the governor said his temporary reprieve will remain in place to allow a future governor the ability to decide whether to carry out the execution. CNN was speaking with Hickenlooper earlier this year for a special series on death penalty cases that has not been aired yet. The series is set to be televised tomorrow. In a different interview, Hickenlooper told FOX31 Denver on Aug. 17 that he is officially anti-death penalty. Hickenlooper told voters in 2010 that he supported capital punishment, but granted a temporary reprieve last May to Dunlap. In a wide-ranging interview, Hickenlooper talked about his reversal and defended his consensus-driven leadership style. "My whole life I was in favor of the death penalty," Hickenlooper told host Eli Stokols. "When Nathan Dunlap was being tried, it was a couple years after we opened the Wynkoop [Brewery] and it was like a family. We all watched it on TV. Everyone but 1 person I think felt he should be executed without question. "But then you get all this information: it costs 10 times, maybe 15 times more money to execute someone than to put someone in prison for life without parole. There's no deterrents to having capital punishment. "And I don't know about you, but when I get new facts, I'll change my opinion. I didn't know all of this stuff. There might be legitimate reasons why the U.S. - there's not a single country in Europe or South America or Mexico or Israel or Australia - none of these countries support the death penalty any more, and there are good reasons for it."