craig welling
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Appeals court upholds convictions following claims of racial bias in jury selection
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Colorado’s second-highest court upheld the convictions of two criminal defendants who alleged prosecutors improperly dismissed jurors of color from their trials, although one appellate judge believed a lower court had failed to properly evaluate the potential for discrimination. Each appeal in the cases of Eve Martinez out of Weld County and D’Shay Damu Evans out…
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Appeals court endorses daily searches of Denver student under ‘safety plan’
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Colorado’s second-highest court has found Denver school security officials acted lawfully by continuing their daily searches of a student with a prior handgun offense, even when the “safety plan” enabling the searches had no expiration date. It has been nearly four decades since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in-school searches do not require probable cause…
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Appeals court rules racist comments not proper evidence, overturns assault conviction
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A Pueblo County judge should not have allowed jurors to hear about the racist comments a defendant made toward his friend hours before allegedly assaulting his godson, the state’s Court of Appeals decided on Thursday. Anthony Joseph Ianne’s case had already proceeded through a three-judge panel of the appellate court, which upheld his conviction last…
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Man who changed mind on DUI blood draw deserves new trial, appeals court says
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A man convicted of driving under the influence in Arapahoe County refused at one point to take a blood alcohol test to determine his level of intoxication. But when he changed his mind, the test did not happen, nor did jurors learn that he ultimately agreed to a blood draw. Now, the state’s Court of…
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Court rules that Arapahoe prosecutor’s questions to jury were ‘fair game’
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Although the prosecution’s conduct was “close to the line,” a panel of Colorado’s Court of Appeals decided by 2-1 that the government did not improperly place the burden on a defendant to prove his innocence at trial. The state’s second-highest court considered whether an Arapahoe County prosecutor’s comments to a jury so fundamentally undermined the…
