constitution
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Appeals court reverses murder conviction after Denver judge violated public trial right
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Colorado’s second-highest court reversed a defendant’s murder conviction on Thursday because a Denver judge violated his constitutional right to a public trial. Due to an unusually large jury pool at Edward R. Sandoval’s 2022 trial, Chief Judge Christopher J. Baumann did not allow observers to be present in his courtroom during jury selection. Although the…
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Colorado Supreme Court weighs whether lifetime sex offender registration amounts to ‘punishment’
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Members of the Colorado Supreme Court appeared wary last week of deeming lifetime sex offender registration “punishment,” even as they heard about the inescapable consequences for a person’s liberty and privacy. Under Colorado law, “sexually violent predators” are subject to lifetime sex offender registration. To qualify, they must be 18 years or older, convicted of certain offenses,…
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Appeals court declines to overturn defendant’s ‘3 strikes’ sentence
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Colorado’s second-highest court concluded on Thursday that a defendant was sentenced under the state’s “three strikes” law in a manner that did not comply with the U.S. Constitution, but the mistake did not require reversal. Known as the Habitual Criminal Act, Colorado’s law requires judges to impose three or four times the maximum sentence if a…
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Divided appeals court upholds convictions despite ‘troubling and unfair’ contradictory police testimony
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Colorado’s second-highest court upheld a man’s convictions for unlawful possession of a firearm on Thursday, even as the majority acknowledged it was potentially unfair that a Denver officer testified to a different sequence of events at trial than earlier in the case. Matthew Torres attempted to exclude from trial the evidence of a handgun in…
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Colorado justices consider whether Denver police failed to respect suspect’s right to counsel
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Members of the Colorado Supreme Court considered on Thursday whether Denver detectives improperly restarted their interrogation of a murder suspect who had clearly invoked his constitutional right to an attorney. The district attorney’s office characterized the circumstances as “peculiar.” When police initially brought in Dakotah Lulei for questioning, he was not under arrest. After receiving…
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Colorado justices weigh potential race-based treatment for Arapahoe County murder defendant
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The Colorado Supreme Court considered a convicted defendant’s argument on Thursday that Arapahoe County prosecutors unconstitutionally singled out him and another Black teenager for murder prosecutions as adults, while offering lenient plea deals to the two non-Black co-defendants. Lloyd Chavez IV, a student at Cherokee Trail High School, died in May 2019 after four teenagers…
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10th Circuit rejects assortment of legal theories challenging workplace vaccine mandates
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The Denver-based federal appeals court rejected an array of legal theories on Tuesday that challenged employers’ ability to impose COVID-19 vaccination requirements under the U.S. Constitution, laws governing emergency drug authorizations and the rules for human experimentation. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit followed in the footsteps of…
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Colorado Supreme Court considers right to self-defense in workplace
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Members of the Colorado Supreme Court seemed open on Tuesday to recognizing a right for employees to use smeelf-defense in the workplace without facing termination. “It may be shoplifting, but if it’s a self-defense situation and you’re reasonably in danger of serious injury or death, why should the employer make that choice for the employee…
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Judge orders noncitizen released from immigration detention, finds government misapplied law
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A federal judge concluded the government was likely wrong to detain a noncitizen without the chance for a release hearing, and ordered him to be let out of immigration custody on Friday. At the same time, U.S. District Court Judge Regina M. Rodriguez declined to green-light Nestor Esai Mendoza Gutierrez’s request to turn his lawsuit…
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Federal judge dismisses claims that Boulder prosecutor ’emboldened’ false testimony
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A federal judge on Tuesday dismissed a man’s claims that a former Boulder County prosecutor “emboldened” an alleged sexual assault victim to alter her story after the original charge was dismissed for lack of probable cause. The district attorney’s office twice attempted to prosecute Pierce Spinelli for felony sexual assault, his lawsuit alleged. But both…
