When you think about all the places in the world where people could be thrown in jail for their words, you probably don’t think of Colorado.

Make no mistake. It could happen here.

Colorado is one of a relative handful of states that still has on the books a statute criminalizing libel, though we hope not for long.

A bill to repeal the law, parts of which date to 1868, cleared its first hurdle Tuesday in the state legislature. The measure drew no opposition during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, and committee members voted 6-0 to send the measure to the floor.

Senate Bill 102 is sponsored by state Sen. Greg Brophy, R-Wray, who told us he was shocked to realize the state considers it a felony to “blacken the memory” of the dead, or “expose the natural defects” of the living.

In civil libel law, truth is a solid defense. Not so with Colorado’s criminal libel law. What you write can be absolutely true and you could still be charged.

“I thought we had First Amendment protections, and it turns out we just mostly have First Amendment protections,” Brophy told us.

To be sure, the statute isn’t invoked often, but it doesn’t take but one case to realize the dangers of the statute.

The long-running “Howling Pig” case has brought those issues into clearer focus.

In 2003, University of Northern Colorado student Thomas Mink criticized university officials on his satirical website, The Howling Pig. He soon found himself on the business end of a search warrant, which allowed police to seize his computer.

So what did he do that was so awful?

Mink used software to alter a photo of UNC professor Junius Peake and posted it online. He made the finance professor look like Gene Simmons, bassist for the rock group KISS. The professor, complete with extended tongue, was renamed Junius Puke.

Peake, who has since died, had complained to authorities about the depiction.

Shortly after police took Mink’s computer, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit in which he contended his free speech rights had been violated and asked a federal court to declare the state statute unconstitutional.

The case didn’t quite get to that point. Since prosecutors did not file charges against Mink, the federal courts turned down the request to look at the constitutionality of the statute.

However, in December Mink reached a $425,000 settlement in his claims against a county prosecutor who signed off on the warrant allowing a search of his home.

For eight years, the issue trundled along in the court system, even as similar laws in other states had long been overturned or repealed.

We hope Colorado lawmakers do right by the First Amendment and take this antiquated criminal libel law off the books.