Welcome to Court Crawl, Colorado Politics’ roundup of news from the third branch of government.

The state Supreme Court held multiple oral arguments and issued several decisions as the justices head toward their July and August recess, plus Colorado’s federal trial court announced who will fill a pair of magistrate judge vacancies.

Supreme Court business

•  The justices concluded Colorado’s “Make My Day” law that authorizes lethal force for home defense did not apply to a concrete stoop outside a man’s Denver apartment, where the victim was standing when the defendant opened fire.

•  An Adams County judge misunderstood whether a suspect was detained for a traffic stop or under “full arrest” when he found that law enforcement violated the Fourth Amendment, the Supreme Court ruled.

•  The court clarified that litigants cannot be notified via email they are subject to contempt proceedings, although one justice suggested the rules should be changed to account for circumstances where people evade service.

•  Waving aside a broader rule about when police may use IP-based search warrants to investigate suspects and their electronic devices, the Supreme Court determined law enforcement acted reasonably by seizing a man’s computer after he volunteered that he used the Internet network targeted by the warrant.

•  Plaintiffs can’t use breach-of-contract lawsuits against public entities to sidestep the governmental immunity afforded by Colorado law, the court decided.

•  Even after a 2023 U.S. Supreme Court decision recognized business owners’ limited right to evade anti-discrimination laws, the state’s justices appeared skeptical that a Lakewood cake maker’s refusal to supply a customer with a cake celebrating her gender transition was protected under the First Amendment.

•  After Colorado’s legislature abolished life without parole for felony murder — i.e. when there’s an underlying crime and someone happens to die, but the defendant wasn’t the one who killed the victim directly — the Supreme Court considered whether people currently serving life sentences, who were left out of the law change, should nevertheless be resentenced. The former lawmaker who sponsored the 2021 change to felony murder said that while he purposefully made the law forward-looking only, he had a good reason: he was worried the Supreme Court’s own precedent rendered a retroactive change out of the question.

•  The Supreme Court will hear an appeal questioning whether interest owed to medical malpractice plaintiffs is similarly subject to the damages cap in state law. The justices may also intervene in a Boulder County case that questions when police are obligated to turn on their body-worn or dashboard cameras.

Heard on appeal

•  Three months after the state’s Court of Appeals ruled local governments can exempt privately owned and used concert venues from the noise limits in Colorado law, a different set of appellate judges concluded the opposite. Now, it falls to the Supreme Court to potentially choose who got it right.

•  By 2-1, the Court of Appeals concluded a Denver judge issued a lawful crime victim restitution order, even though he didn’t strictly abide by the Supreme Court’s vision for imposing restitution. 

In federal news

•  Colorado’s U.S. District Court has disclosed who will be the next magistrate judges: federal public defender Timothy P. O’Hara and federal prosecutor Cyrus Y. Chung. Following their background checks (which have taken several months to complete in recent years), O’Hara will take the seat of S. Kato Crews, who is now a district judge, and Chung will succeed Michael E. Hegarty, the most senior magistrate judge who is retiring in January.

•  Barring further changes, as of next year, the district court will have welcomed five lifetime appointed judges since 2021 and six full- or part-time magistrate judges in that same window. Needless to say, it’s an unusual amount of turnover. For the time being, the court’s membership will likely remain stable.

•  Colorado’s first openly gay federal judge, Charlotte N. Sweeney, sentenced the defendant who killed five people at a Colorado Springs LGBTQ nightclub in 2022. Sweeney, a former board member of the Matthew Shepard Foundation, sentenced the shooter for violations of the federal Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act.

•  A federal judge partially blocked Colorado from implementing a new legal provision on July 1 that would require banks chartered in other states to aide by Colorado’s ceilings on interest rates when lending to Coloradans.

•  The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit declined to intervene in the criminal prosecution of former Mesa County clerk Tina Peters for charges related to alleged tampering with election equipment.

Vacancies and appointments

•  Denver District Court Judge Christine C. Antoun died on May 25 at age 52. She had previously announced her retirement effective Jan. 1, 2025.

Miscellaneous proceedings

•  The disciplinary hearing against 11th Judicial District Attorney Linda Stanley concluded last week, with testimony about her statements to the media in multiple murder cases, which witnesses characterized as improper.

•  Colorado’s Judicial Department has unveiled a new website with a more streamlined look: