judge shannon lyons
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Colorado Supreme Court lays out frustration with current method of ID’ing racial bias in jury selection
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Colorado’s justices escalated their frustration on Monday with the existing framework for evaluating race-motivated dismissals of jurors in criminal trials, months after the state Supreme Court also invited lawmakers to do their part to fix the problem. Under longstanding U.S. Supreme Court precedent, intentional race-based discrimination in jury selection is unconstitutional. Normally, parties may exercise…
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Appeals court says car crash victim’s pregnancies irrelevant to personal injury trial
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Colorado’s second-highest court determined last week that a Weld County judge should not have instructed jurors to consider a car crash victim’s subsequent pregnancies and the disruption they had to her treatment when deciding how much money she should receive for her injuries. A three-judge panel for the Court of Appeals concluded the evidence did…
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Colorado justices vent about difficulty of evaluating racial bias in jury selection
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Members of the Colorado Supreme Court last week expressed frustration with the difficulties of pinpointing unconstitutional racial bias in jury selection, especially when relatively few details are available after the fact about what happened at trial. “We’re trying to guess what’s in someone’s mind, someone’s heart, even when they may not be aware of it,…
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Appeals court finds no racial discrimination in jury selection for Weld, Adams County trials
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Colorado’s second-highest court last month concluded prosecutors in Weld and Adams counties did not purposefully remove multiple Hispanic jurors from a pair of criminal trials because of their race or ethnicity. Under longstanding U.S. Supreme Court precedent, intentional race-based discrimination in jury selection is unconstitutional. If a prosecutor tries to dismiss a juror of color,…
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No ‘right answer’: Colorado justices to decide who owns mineral rights under street
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Nearly a half century ago, a developer in Greeley sold off the lots surrounding W. 11th Street Road. The deeds did not explicitly say what happened to the mineral rights underneath the road. Decades later, after advances in hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling rendered the mineral rights under the road – and other rights-of-way across the…
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Appeals court sides with Weld County judge who dismissed criminal case for speedy trial violation
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Colorado’s second-highest court last week sided against Weld County prosecutors and agreed a trial judge correctly determined the consequence of his failure to declare a COVID-19-related mistrial was to dismiss the criminal charges against a defendant. The federal and state constitutions guarantee defendants the right to a speedy trial. In Colorado, that means the government…
