Inmate Gets Life Over Death Penalty In Slaying Of Inmate

Denver Post
April 22, 2008

Ivan Moreno

HUGO, Colo. (AP) – Jurors rejected prosecutors’ requests that a state prison inmate be put to death and instead sentenced him to life in prison in the slaying of another inmate who had been labeled a snitch.

David Bueno, 44, was convicted April 9 of stabbing Jeffrey Heird 29 times and beating him severely because he was suspected of not warning other inmates that a drug bust was coming.

Bueno’s attorneys had argued that he was set up by other inmates and said the case against him was based on unreliable witnesses and scant physical evidence.

Prosecutors relied heavily on the testimony of other inmates.

Heird, 40, was killed in the Limon Correctional Facility in 2004. He had been convicted in Utah of kidnapping and killing a Cortez, Colo., gas station attendant in 1991.

Bueno was serving a 24-year sentence for burglary when Heird was killed.