Colorado’s only two death penalty appeals are stuck at a standstill, and now advocates on both sides of the justice system say that a law passed nearly two decades ago to speed up such appeals is failing.

In 1997, Colorado lawmakers frustrated with the slow pace of executions in the state passed a bill they thought would fix it. By putting the most time-consuming part of capital punishment appeals first and setting tight deadlines, the goal was to resolve all litigation in state court within two years of a death sentence being imposed.

Instead, the first two appeals to test the process — those for convicted murderers Sir Mario Owens and Robert Ray — have stalled at that initial step for more than seven years after the sentences were issued. The murders that brought the death sentences occurred 11 years ago this summer.

And with both cases in turmoil — Ray’s attorneys recently tried to withdraw from the appeal over a dispute with a judge, while Owens’ attorneys say they are being improperly denied information about why their judge was fired — the delays look set to continue for months or years more.

The gridlock has even the sponsor of the 1997 bill wondering whether something about the death penalty in Colorado has to change.

“I’m almost to the point where I would say, ‘Let’s do away with it and save the taxpayers the money,’ ” said Jeanne Adkins, a former state representative from Douglas County.

In any death penalty case, deciding the sentence is usually the quick part. What follows the jury’s verdict is a trail of appeals that reaches all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and back.

Those on death row in Colorado are guaranteed two appeals in state court: the “direct appeal,” which challenges the integrity of the trial, and the “post-conviction appeal,” in which defendants introduce new evidence or raise claims of prosecutorial misconduct or incompetent representation. Prior to 1997, the direct appeal went first followed by the post-conviction appeal.

But, because the post-conviction appeal is the lengthier of the two, lawmakers in 1997 flipped the order. Now, after a lower-court judge issues an initial ruling on the post-conviction appeal, the two appeals then move in tandem to the Colorado Supreme Court — in what’s been dubbed a “unitary” system. (Appeals that take place in federal court, after all the state-court appeals finish, are another matter.)

The law says all post-conviction proceedings in state court “shall be completed within two years after the date upon which the sentence of death is imposed.”

“There shall be no extensions of time of any kind beyond the two-year period,” the law states.

Except the Colorado Supreme Court ruled in 2010 that’s not exactly true. Instead, the justices concluded the law allows them to adopt rules granting extensions, “upon a showing of extraordinary circumstances that could not have been foreseen and prevented.”

That’s an important wrinkle, said Denver defense attorney Christopher Decker, because it provides necessary safeguards for a defendant’s constitutional rights.

“If they just speed up the process and strip everyone of due process, we’ll have a very fast outcome that will be worth nothing,” said Decker, who is not involved in either appeal. “It won’t stand up to constitutional review.”

But that’s also what has allowed Owens’ and Ray’s appeals to linger for years in state court without resolution. Ray’s post-conviction hearings haven’t even started yet in Arapahoe County District Court. Owens’ hearings could have to be completely redone after the senior judge presiding over the case was fired as he was about to issue his final order.

“Two years may have been unrealistic,” said Tom Raynes, the executive director of the Colorado District Attorneys’ Council. “But eight years to not even get halfway there is absurd.”

Raynes said the legislature might now need to rewrite the unitary appeal statute. Decker said other constitutional concerns — once briefly the subject of a lawsuit — could doom it altogether. And Adkins, once the biggest champion of the idea, is pessimistic about whether lawmakers can do anything.

“The death penalty has become so politicized, truthfully, in the last decade or so in Colorado that I really think that a lot of what the legislature tried to do may actually be pretty pointless now,” she said.

One of the lawmakers who could have a say on this, though, is one of the people mostly deeply affected by the delays. State Rep. Rhonda Fields’ son, Javad Marshall-Fields, was one of two people killed — along with his fiancée, Vivian Wolfe — in the murders that put Owens and Ray on death row. The wait for justice has been excruciating, she said. But she’s optimistic there is a solution.

“I think there’s got to be something that we can do to protect the rights of the victims and protect the rights of the defendants,” she said, “that’s not dragging things out for 11 years.”