legal
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Appeals court reverses another Adams County conviction due to judge’s faulty analogy
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Another man convicted in Adams County will receive a new trial because the judge described reasonable doubt to jurors using an analogy very similar to one the Colorado Supreme Court recently deemed problematic. The Court of Appeals’ reversal of Darren Ross Hoffman’s attempted murder convictions is the second time in recent weeks that an Adams…
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State Supreme Court agrees to scrutinize law involving testimony from child victims
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The Colorado Supreme Court has agreed to review a pair of cases that call into question how old a child victim must be for their statements outside of the courtroom to be admissible at trial. The first appeal from Dennis R. Chirinos-Raudales comes in the wake of his 2017 convictions for sexually assaulting a child. The trial…
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COVER STORY | A Rittenhouse acquittal in Colorado? Longstanding self-defense laws would allow it
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A young man being pursued down the street attempted to evade his attacker, asking to be left alone until the last possible minute, when he killed the aggressor. The killer could be Kyle Rittenhouse, the then-17-year-old who shot two men and wounded a third in the streets of Kenosha, Wisc. following days of racial justice…
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? Nicolais: Supreme Court reviews pulling back the jury curtain for racial bias
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The Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees “an impartial jury” to all defendants. But what seems to be a clear and concise rule becomes much less so in practice. Most dramatically, whatever is said among deliberating jurors cannot be used to prove bias. No matter how far from impartial such statements may remove a…
