House Bill 19-1275 is new legislation modifying Colorado’s rules for sealing criminal records. With several exceptions that we will discuss, the bill promotes such sealings—it enlarges the category of cases that can be removed from someone’s criminal record, prescribes steps courts must take to help people through the process of removing them, and stops prosecutors […]
We recently blogged on the tragic case of Ever Olivos-Guttierez, the undocumented alien who slammed into the vehicle of 17 year old Juan Carlos Dominguez-Palomino. Mr. Olivos-Guttierez fled the scene, and the young Dominguez-Palomino was killed. In a very unusual move, the Arapahoe County District Attorney’s office charged Mr. Olivos-Guttierez with 1st Degree Murder. In […]
There is an expression in Latin, de minimus non curat lex, which means “the law does not concern itself with trifles.” We probably didn’t need to tell you that—no doubt your Latin is all brushed up on. Our apologies. Ipso apologium. Whatever. Anyway, the idea that a state’s system of justice should be called into action only […]
Regularly we talk to people charged with crimes of violence, and some of them wonder whether they can claim self-defense to avoid conviction. Perhaps the oldest and most intuitive legal concept there is, self-defense is the right of a person to exercise such force as would normally be criminal to prevent harm to his or […]
As criminal defense attorneys we think so much about the front end of the justice system—the settlement of cases in court—that we might sometimes neglect to consider what comes after a conviction. But it is in the post-sentencing stages of a criminal proceeding that the full weight of the matter reveals itself, not just for […]
Controversial Beginnings The investigation into U.S. President Donald Trump’s relationship with Russia has controversial beginnings: a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) authorizing the secret observation of people close to Trump. Regardless of one’s feelings about this investigation in particular, warrants issued under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in general animate the […]
Filing A Civil Claim In a Drinking Under the Influence (DUI) Case According to Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD),up to 75 percent of individuals convicted of DUI continue to drive with a suspended license. If you are injured as a result of a DUI-related accident, you may have to file a claim against the drunk […]
Convicting the Innocent According to The Innocence Project, a nationwide organization working to exonerate, win compensation for, and rehabilitate people wrongfully convicted of crimes, around seventy percent of the hundreds of convictions the organization has overturned so far using DNA evidence have resulted from eyewitness misidentification. Traditional police methods promote such error, in part because […]
New Laws With the passage of The Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018, legislators have officially distinguished hemp from marijuana, making hemp an agricultural product instead of a controlled substance. From this will come a multitude of changes. Hemp farmers can now buy crop insurance. Banks will grant loans to hemp-related businesses, and credit card companies […]
A Turning Point For decades, experts in law enforcement, many of them active or former police officers, have pointed out the deficiencies of police strategy as it has come to be across the country. Bound up in a vicious cycle, most of these deficiencies both result from and exacerbate distrust between law enforcement agencies and […]