It’s labeled a crime of “extreme indifference,” and, if Colorado Democrats have their way, the thrower of a rock that shatters a random car windshield and takes the life of the occupant of a vehicle won’t be punished as harshly “as someone who kills intentionally and after deliberation,” as one local news outlet put it.
On April 29, the Colorado House by a single vote passed a bill that would make death caused by depraved indifference to human life no longer subject to the same penalty as deliberate first-degree murder, life in prison without parole.
Colorado Democrats are arguing that the intent to murder someone is worse than haphazardly engaging in an act of violence highly likely to cause grave harm to wholly unwitting victims and not caring what happens.
Inside the Criminal Mind in Colorado
“This bill is about the difference between a person who wakes up in morning and decides after making a plan that they will end someone’s life and a person who makes a reckless choice in a moment without forethought, without targeting and without deliberate and specific intent to kill,” Democratic state Rep. Javier Mabrey asserted as the measure was being debated, CBS News Colorado reported.
Republicans argued that the very lack of any concern over choice of target or the consequences of willfully committed violent acts is far more threatening to the general public than deliberate homicide. “When someone acts in a way that says, ‘I don’t care who dies,’ that is not lesser form of culpability, it is a broader one. It is a more dangerous one,” GOP state Rep. Ty Winter declared on the House floor.
The legislation now faces an uncertain future in the blue-controlled state Senate before possibly reaching the desk of Democrat Gov. Jared Polis, who “does not support the bill as written,” a spokesman stated. He has his reasons. A public relations nightmare is lurking as opponents highlight one particular “reckless choice” made “in a moment” that snuffed out the life of a 20-year-old woman.
‘Seems Obvious Someone Was Going to Get Hurt’
In 2023, Alexa Bartell was killed when a rock smashed “through her windshield and struck her in the head around 10:45 pm as she drove on Indiana Street near the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge,” The Colorado Sun related. “Investigators say the three men [involved] didn’t call for help after they saw Bartell’s car crash into a nearby field and instead, drove back and took photos of her car.”
Bartell was in a position any of us at any time could find ourselves when her life was extinguished. Joseph Koenig was identified as the individual who hurled the fatal rock. In June 2025, he was sentenced to life in prison plus 60 years. Co-defendants Zachary Kwak and Nicholas “Mitch” Karol-Chik pleaded guilty to lesser charges and received sentences of 32 and 45 years behind bars, respectively. All three men were 18 at the time of the incident.
Colorado Democrats and Republicans see Koenig’s remarks made before sentencing far differently.
“I have no excuse and I have no explanation for what Mitch, Zach and I did that night, but I hope you believe me when I tell you that we didn’t intend to hurt Alexa, or hurt anybody,” Koenig said. “Looking back on it now, it seems obvious that someone was going to get hurt or killed.”
‘We Keep Lowering Things and Lessening the Consequences’
There is a fourth group involved here beyond Democrats, Republicans, and indifferent criminals, of course, and critics of ever-softer criminal justice laws have long wondered why its voice doesn’t carry more weight. This would be the surviving family members and loved ones of the deceased, whose lives in a flash become forever marked by a permanent devastation.
“My daughter’s life had value,” Kelly Bartell, Alexa’s mother, said in speaking out against the bill, KUSA-TV in Denver reported. “We keep lowering things and lessening the consequences,” she continued. “My daughter doesn’t get a second chance, you know? They need consequences.”
It’s sadly become a quaint notion in an age when emotional attachment to wrongdoers, in a warped focus on the individual, often blots out concern for other unique human beings, the innocent victims of violent crime. We live in a society, and the individual has certain basic responsibilities within that construct. Actions have consequences. If you do not want to be held fully responsible for those consequences, think before you act.
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