judge john daniel dailey
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Polis names first Black judge to Court of Appeals in 4 years
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Gov. Jared Polis on Thursday announced his appointment of Denver Juvenile Court Judge Pax Moultrie to Colorado’s second-highest court, ending the four-year span in which no Black judges sat on the Court of Appeals. The last Black member of the Court of Appeals, Karen M. Ashby, retired in 2019. Like Moultrie, she also served on…
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Appeals court reverses another Adams County conviction for judge’s faulty analogy
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Colorado’s second-highest court on Thursday once again overturned a defendant’s convictions because an Adams County judge illustrated reasonable doubt to jurors in a way that improperly lowered the prosecution’s burden to prove him guilty. The Court of Appeals has repeatedly reversed the convictions of defendants for more than a year – exclusively from Adams County – after the Colorado Supreme Court decided in 2022 that some judges’ well-meaning…
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Mesa County judge imposed illegal sentence, appeals court finds
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Colorado’s second-highest court last week agreed that a Mesa County judge imposed an illegal sentence and also failed to adequately explain why he subjected a defendant to lifetime sex offender registration. Mesa County District Court Judge Richard T. Gurley sentenced Joshua James Ellis to 15 years in prison plus five years of parole after Ellis…
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Divided appeals court finds no misconduct from Denver prosecutor’s inflammatory argument
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While the Colorado Supreme Court has established that prosecutors may not characterize a witness’s testimony as a “lie,” the state’s second-highest court has decided, by 2-1, a Denver prosecutor did not cross the line by repeatedly using a synonym for “lie.” Jurors convicted Rigoberto E. Fernandez in 2015 for stabbing a man at Montbello Recreation…
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Arapahoe County prosecutors’ misconduct prompts appeals court to reverse convictions
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Misconduct from Arapahoe County prosecutors and a trial judge’s refusal to provide a key jury instruction prompted Colorado’s second-highest court on Thursday to overturn a man’s bank robbery convictions. In 2019, jurors convicted Steven Dudley Smith of robbery, menacing and kidnapping charges related to four bank robberies. Although police caught Smith at the scene of…
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Colorado Supreme Court to hear 2 criminal cases, school district dispute
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The Colorado Supreme Court announced this week that it will hear a pair of criminal appeals questioning whether a murder suspect was in custody at the time of her interrogation, and whether police acted constitutionally when they executed an Internet-based search warrant. At least three of the court’s seven members must consent to review a…
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Colorado credit union’s update of terms, ‘buried’ in email, provided sufficient notice to customers, court says
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A Colorado credit union gave sufficient notice to consumers when it announced a change to customers’ legal rights in two sentences at the bottom of an email that required multiple clicks to see the new policy, the Court of Appeals ruled last week. Although a three-judge panel of the appellate court agreed Ent Credit Union…
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Colorado Supreme Court to hear case of conflicted judge
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When a judge took office in Saguache County four years ago, she presided over a criminal case in which she previously, as a public defender, had appeared briefly on behalf of the defendant. No one raised a red flag at the time. Now, the Colorado Supreme Court has agreed to review a split decision from…
