On Friday afternoon, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis issued 35 pardons. He also commuted the sentences of nine prisoners, allowing them to be released years before they otherwise would be.

Some of these acts of clemency were deeply controversial. Polis, a Democrat, shortened the sentences of multiple convicted murderers. He is also setting free Brandin Kreuzer, who shot Douglas County Sheriff’s Deputy Todd Tucker in 2008 and has served 15 years of a 50-year sentence. “I had numerous surgeries to basically put my arm back together,” Tucker told Denver’s 9News. “I still have lasting nerve damage to this day. My arm is not 100 percent, does not function as it should.” The current county sheriff said in a statement that he was “furious” about Kreuzer’s commutation: “The audacity of Governor Polis to grant clemency to a would-be cop killer on National Peace Officer Memorial Day shows a complete lack of respect for the brave men and women who wear the badge.”

But it’s a different commutation that has sparked furious bipartisan backlash across Colorado. In 2024, Tina Peters—the former Mesa County clerk—was convicted of various crimes for her role in a scheme to illegally breach that county’s election system and in an effort to prove the 2020 race had been stolen from Donald Trump. Peters was originally sentenced to nearly nine years behind bars. On Friday, Polis commuted her sentence to about four-and-a-half years and ordered her paroled next........

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