Author: George Brauchler

George Brauchler Colorado’s Office of the State Public Defender (OSPD) is seeking to expand one of the fastest growing budgets in all of state government by an additional $17.7 million in taxpayer funds – and legislators would be wise to scrutinize the request and say “no.” OSPD’s budget has exploded over the past decade, but…

George Brauchler Events reported in just the past few days remind us of how the “we know best” philosophy of criminal justice reform under the Gold Dome can work predictable injustices in the real world. On Aug. 5, 2020, 17-year-old Dillon Siebert and two other teenagers murdered a Senegalese family of five by burning them…

George Brauchler The news this week that Denver’s homicide rate is the third fastest-growing in the U.S. surprises few. Our state policymakers’ ongoing failure to protect us from expanding crime is encouraging Coloradans to look to themselves for protection. The latest effort to expand when lethal force can be used with legal impunity to include…

George Brauchler “Every person deserves a safe home and a safe community, and in three years I want Colorado to be closing in on our goal of becoming one of the top-ten safest states.” Agreed. Gov. Jared Polis should be applauded for using some of his 8,100-word and 70-minute State of the State address to…

George Brauchler Despite significant changes in the past decade weakening our juvenile justice system, things are about to get even easier on violent juvenile criminals. If the early bills of the heavily progressive 2023 General Assembly are a harbinger of what is to come, this legislative session will be as offender friendly as any Colorado…

George Brauchler Last Thursday, Gov. Jared Polis used his sweeping, unassailable constitutional clemency powers to cut short the sentences of four convicted felons, and he wiped away the conviction of 20 others. Polis’s perennial pruning of the prison population continues to create controversy. Here, the standard set by Polis will work only to the advantage…

George Brauchler A mass murderer apprehended at the scene of the crime with his guns has only one possible escape from the greatest sanction available under our law: “I’m nuts.” The Club Q mass shooter is a prime candidate to plead not guilty by reason of insanity (NGRI). The facts as known do not lend…

George Brauchler Editor’s note: On Thursday, Anderson Aldrich’s 2021 bomb threat case was unsealed by an El Paso County judge and Fourth Judicial District Attorney Michael Allen commented on the 2021 case. Allen said two guns were recovered by law enforcement at the 2021 incident, including a handgun described as a “ghost gun” and a…

George Brauchler The aftermath of the blue wave sweeping over Colorado’s midterm elections three weeks ago includes a harder-left General Assembly in 2023 than we have seen in my memory. Previously, I predicted in these pages what I believed this overwhelmingly Progressive legislature likely would do to an already weakened, besieged and overburdened criminal justice…

George Brauchler Despite an absence of any evidence that an extreme risk (red flag) protection order (ERPO) was appropriate, obtainable or would have prevented the mass murder at Club Q in Colorado Springs this past weekend, some media and politicos have hurriedly impugned the performance of law enforcement and called for an invigorated approach to…