The case made its way to the Court of Appeals, which affirmed Leopold's decision, then to the Colorado Supreme Court, which in 2009 narrowly upheld Farrar's conviction. The justices split 4-3 on the matter, with Michael Bender authoring a sharp dissent that echoed Walta's concerns.
"The victim's suspect initial testimony, when coupled with the lack of corroborative evidence in this case, demonstrates that this key witness's recantation would probably bring about an acquittal," Justice Bender wrote. "Thus, justice requires a new trial."
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Charles Farrar passed a polygraph and turned down a plea bargain, convinced he'd be acquitted at his 2002 trial. His earliest parole date is 77 years away.
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Sacha Bruce, now 26, recanted her testimony shortly after Farrar's trial — and was attacked by prosecutors.
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A motion for reconsideration of Farrar's sentence, which draws heavily on the deeply divided Supreme Court decision, has been pending in front of Judge Valeria Spencer for almost two years. "This issue has been fully and vigorously litigated and tested at all levels of our court system," says Arapahoe County Deputy District Attorney Jay Williford, who's asked Spencer to deny the defense motion.
Former prosecutor Schober, now in private practice, did not respond to a request for comment on the Farrar case. Vahle, currently a judge in Arapahoe County, declined to comment through a spokesman. Leopold retired in 2006; his replacement on the bench turned out to be former special prosecutor Samour. Michael Bender is now the chief justice of the state's highest court.
Charles Farrar is still in prison.
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Colorado Department of Corrections officials get nervous when journalists ask to talk to a convicted sex offender. Westword's request to interview Charles Farrar was at first denied, on the grounds that inmates in his situation tend to "get beat up or commit suicide" when the press is done with them. The interview was granted only after Farrar insisted that he was eager to tell his story.
Talking helps keep Farrar from despairing over nearly a decade of incarceration with no end in sight. The letters and phone calls he gets from his family Debbie's kids, his kids, they're all his family to this day anchor him in the present, focus him on the fight. He discusses with them his legal research and strategies, his dwindling options for relief. Despite the best efforts of the justice system to paint Farrar as a monster and drive a wedge between him and his family, the bonds endure.
The minute he turned eighteen and was eligible to visit his father at Sterling, Eric Farrar had a ride and the paperwork already lined up. "My dad has always been the biggest thing in my life," he says. "I remember my big, stocky daddy. But the first time I walked in there, seeing the time and stress that prison has put on him...he'd lost weight. He looks a lot older. It destroyed me, seeing him looking like that."
One family member isn't supposed to have any contact with him; sex offenders are prohibited from communicating with their victims. But that hasn't stopped Sacha from trying. Prison officials have intercepted her letters and banned her phone calls. But she has managed to get messages to her stepfather through various back channels. "Why does she stay in contact with me all these years if any of this happened?" Farrar asks.
Sacha Bruce can never visit him. She lives in Sapulpa, Oklahoma, a small town outside of Tulsa that welcomes visitors with a sign declaring that CHARACTER COUNTS. It's the kind of backwater that still has a family video store, one that offers free rentals to kids with good report cards. Sacha has a husband and two children of her own now, including a tenth-month-old daughter, Bella, named after the heroine of the Twilight series.
But she still tells the same story that she did eight years ago. The story of her recantation, unlike so many wild stories she's told over the years, has remained remarkably consistent. It's the story of a fifteen-year-old girl who did a terrible thing with a lot of help from adults.
She still considers Charles Farrar the only real dad she ever had. Her kids have never met this man, and that bothers her a great deal. She wants to make things right.
"He's told me he forgives me," she says. "We go forward. We do what we can."