judge lino lipinsky
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Colorado Supreme Court upholds Boulder bike thief’s restitution to victim
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The Colorado Supreme Court on Monday upheld the $2,394 in restitution a Boulder thief owed for damaging his victim’s car as he fled, rejecting the argument that the victim’s actions actually caused the damage. In the process, the justices also clarified defendants have to clear a high threshold when challenging a trial judge’s finding that…
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Appeals court clarifies criteria for extending juvenile speedy trial deadline
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Colorado’s second-highest court clarified for the first time earlier this month that the same criteria used to extend an adult criminal defendant’s speedy trial deadline also apply to juveniles. The federal and state constitutions guarantee the right to a speedy trial. In Colorado, that means the government generally must bring defendants to trial within six…
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Colorado justices ponder whether evidence enough to convict man of sex crime
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The Colorado Supreme Court considered this week whether Jefferson County prosecutors actually had enough evidence to convict a man of a child sex crime, based on a one-minute, sexually suggestive conversation for which he is serving six years to life in prison. Previously, the state’s Court of Appeals concluded James Clayton Johnson’s alleged comments toward…
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Court reinstates wage appeal, finds state agency couldn’t establish missed deadline
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Colorado’s second-highest court last month reinstated a company’s appeal in a wage violation case, finding the state’s labor department neglected to indicate when it mailed its original decision and further misrepresented the deadline to appeal. A three-judge panel for the Court of Appeals considered the narrow, but novel, issue of what happens when a party…
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Crime victim cannot sue over sheriff’s mishandling of evidence, appeals court rules
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A crime victim cannot claim the Huerfano County Sheriff’s Office violated his constitutional rights when it failed to process key evidence and compromised his assailant’s prosecution, Colorado’s second-highest court ruled on Thursday. In a case that seemed to be the first of its kind, Brian Puerta attempted to sue Sheriff Bruce Newman and three of…
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Colorado justices hear arguments on Jeffco slip-and-fall, man’s pursuit of bike thief
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Members of the Colorado Supreme Court on Thursday considered whether the state law that broadly shields the government from civil lawsuits applies to upgrades of public parking garages, raising the possibility of cities and counties being increasingly on the hook for personal injury claims in the future. The justices also heard a second case questioning…
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Appeals court, 2-1, says names of book ban advocates not subject to disclosure
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Colorado law does not permit libraries to disclose the identities of people who request the removal of certain books, the state’s second-highest court ruled last week. A three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals did not weigh in on the broader movement to ban materials that touch on LGBTQ themes or race from library shelves.…
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Colorado Supreme Court dismisses appeal over Jeffco officer’s home reentry
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Three days after hearing arguments in a criminal case out of Jefferson County, the Colorado Supreme Court took the unusual step of dismissing the appeal and letting stand a lower court’s decision governing police officers’ warrantless entries into homes. Multiple justices last week observed there were significant defects in the appeal of Adrienne Marie Stone’s…
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Colorado justices ponder dismissal of Jeffco criminal appeal during oral arguments
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Following her convictions for felony menacing and child abuse, news reports surfaced describing Adrienne Marie Stone’s history of threatening neighbors, endangering her kids and maintaining an unsanitary “hoarder” household. But on Tuesday, the mess that members of the Colorado Supreme Court were concerned about was the unclear sequence of events underlying Stone’s prosecution. In an…
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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…
