judge bruce langer
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Boulder County prosecutor improperly used defendant’s silence as guilt, appeals court finds
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Colorado’s second-highest court reversed a Boulder County defendant’s sexual assault conviction last week after concluding that a trial judge should have intervened to stop the prosecutor from inappropriately using the man’s constitutional right to silence to suggest he was guilty. Prosecutors charged Charles G. Higdon III with two counts of sexual assault. Jurors acquitted him…
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Boulder County residents cannot sue over firearm discharge on federal land, appeals court rules
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Colorado’s second-highest court ruled on Thursday that two residents of Boulder County could not sue the county’s commissioners for walking back a policy originally banning firearms discharge on nearby land owned by the U.S. government. Boulder County leaders enacted a resolution in 2022 expanding the area near Sugarloaf Mountain in which it was unlawful to…
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Boulder County judge wasn’t obligated to bail out self-represented defendant, appeals court rules
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Colorado’s second-highest court concluded last month that a criminal defendant in Boulder County was not unfairly forced to choose between his rights to a speedy trial and to an attorney, and, when he elected to go without an attorney, the trial judge was not obligated to save him from his own poor performance. Jurors convicted Timothy…
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Colorado Supreme Court orders 2 new trials where prosecutors presented misleading evidence
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The Colorado Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed new trials were necessary in a pair of cases where judges allowed prosecutors to present a skewed narrative to jurors by omitting evidence that suggested the defendants had not committed the charged offenses. The link between Jacob Vanderpauye’s case in Boulder County and Charles Joseph McLaughlin’s in Arapahoe…
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Colorado Supreme Court critical of prosecutors’ misleading presentation of evidence
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Members of the Colorado Supreme Court on Tuesday pushed back against the notion that prosecutors can paint a misleading picture of a criminal defendant’s guilt by shielding the jury from evidence the defendant did not commit an offense after all. In a pair of cases argued before the justices, the government asserted the state’s Court…
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Colorado appeals court overturns menacing conviction due to Boulder County judge’s error
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Colorado’s second-highest court last week overturned a woman’s felony menacing conviction because a Boulder County judge effectively barred jurors from hearing evidence suggesting she acted to defend herself against a sexual assault. In Michelle Nicole Couch’s 2019 trial, jurors learned that Couch had twice pulled a knife on the alleged victim while the two were…