New Legislation A new law is hitting the books in Colorado in January, and a lot of people are talking about it. The “Deputy Zackari Parrish III Violence Prevention Act,” one of the various “red flag” laws emerging across the country, will allow a concerned family member, spouse, roommate, or law enforcement agency to file […]
Category Archives: Criminal Defense
Defense Lawyers, Amirite? Over the year or so that I’ve worked for Colin and Russ, the subject has come up, most often with people outside the legal field but also once or twice with Colin and Russ themselves, whether I have a moral objection to the work of criminal defense. “What’s it like,” the non-lawyers […]
A Delicate Balance Contact with the police under U.S. law involves a shifting tension between citizens’ constitutional rights and the need to stop crime: the greater the imposition police make on someone’s privacy, the greater the cause they must be able to show for that imposition. Since evidence police collect during contact with citizens can […]
In my last blog, we talked about the pros and cons of talking to the police when under investigation for a crime. As a general rule, we concluded that the less said, the better. What about Miranda warnings? At least once a day, one of my clients will say “the cop didn’t read me my […]
Recently, there has been an increase in travel security at the borders. Not only have restrictions to travel been enacted but there have also been more searches, including searches of people’s phones. Unknown to most, Border Patrol and Customs agents have long had extensive powers to search when they have reasonable suspicions and often when they do […]
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 […]