Lawmakers on Tuesday took the first step toward repealing the death penalty in Colorado.

Lead sponsors Sens. Julie Gonzales, D-Denver, and Jack Tate, R-Centennial, introduced the repeal bill, which calls for capital punishment to be abolished in this state starting on July 1.

This is the sixth repeal attempt in about a dozen years. And it will likely be the one that finally succeeds: Tate and two other Senate Republicans are joining the vast majority of Democrats in supporting the bill, all but guaranteeing its passage. The House is certain to pass the bill, and the governor has said he’d sign it into law.

Only one person — murderer and rapist Gary Lee Davis — has been executed in Colorado since a federal moratorium on the death penalty was lifted in 1976.

There are now just three people on death row in Colorado. The bill does not propose to alter their sentences in any way.

Two of those men were convicted in the killing of state Sen. Rhonda Fields’ son and his fiancée. The Aurora Democrat will oppose this year’s bill, but she told The Denver Post last week that if the bill passes she’ll be glad to move on from what is a very painful conversation for her.

“It’s hurtful,” she said, “because it reminds me of my own personal trauma and scars as it relates to the death of my son and his fiancée, and I have to live with that pain and those scars every day.”