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A Hospital Without Walls
Denver’s Court to Community program is showing promise.
By Alan Prendergast
Published: May 29, 2008
Thursday afternoons in courtroom 151P tend to be less formal than other proceedings in Denver county courts. Judge Larry Bohning still hands out an occasional scolding ("Time's...
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Feature
Ultrarunning Gets Younger – and Faster
Tony Krupicka takes his sport to new extremes.
By Alan Prendergast
Published: April 10, 2008
Three things you need to know right away about Tony Krupicka: First, the guy loves to run. Loves it. He cruises the trails above Colorado Springs three, four, even six hours a...
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News
Bad Execution
A judge removes DA Carol Chambers from a death-penalty case -- and blasts prosecution misconduct.
By Alan Prendergast
Published: April 10, 2008
Defense attorneys have accused her of running a death machine, but the wheels came off Carol Chambers's rattling apparatus this week. On Monday a judge ruled that Chambers, the...
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Night & Day
Who You Gonna Kill?
By Alan Prendergast
Published: April 3, 2008
By most measures, Colorado isn't any more liberal than other western states. So how come the state has managed to put to death only one prisoner in the past forty years, while...
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Feature
Arapahoe County DA Charges Death-Penalty Fees to the State
How does DA Carol Chambers beat the high cost of a death-penalty prosecution? By billing the prison system.
By Alan Prendergast
Published: February 28, 2008
The State of Colorado has managed to execute one murderer in the past forty years. Its death row, current population one, is among the smallest in the country. For four years...
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Sidebar
Inmates Waitin' Around to Die
Only one man is on death row, but seven others are waiting in the wings.
By Alan Prendergast
Published: February 28, 2008
Technically speaking, Colorado hasn't had a death row for several years — not since officials at the Colorado State Penitentiary stopped housing the prisoners awaiting...
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Feature
Phil Van Cise: Scourge of Denver's Underworld
Fearless DA Phil Van Cise cleaned up Denver — and it cost him his career. Can a new justice center right an old wrong?
By Alan Prendergast
Published: February 7, 2008
You can learn a lot about a crook, the Colonel knew, if you discover who his friends are. By his friends you shall know him. But in the case of an honest man like the Colonel,...
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Feature
Blackburned
Who’s the bigger bully — the smartass attorney who scorched the Denver Fire Department, or the fussbudget judge who threw out the verdict?
By Alan Prendergast
Published: December 13, 2007
It's ten minutes to five on the afternoon of June 29, 2006, and Mark Brennan can feel the tension coiled inside him like a steel spring, wound to the breaking point. He sits in...
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Feature
The Poisoned Pen of Fort Lyon Prison
Bought by the state for a dollar, Fort Lyon is rich in history, asbestos, sick inmates — and trouble.
By Alan Prendergast
Published: November 15, 2007
History Lesson #1 In 1829, William Bent headed west to join his older brother in the fur business. William was twenty years old, the son of a Missouri supreme court justice...
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News
Blackwater Isn't the Only Security Contractor With Something to Hide
A Denver court case reveals dirty trade secrets from the business of war in Iraq.
By Alan Prendergast
Published: October 25, 2007
After twenty years of highly decorated service in the U.S. Army Special Forces, David Boone thought he knew the rules of engagement. But that was before he found himself back...
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Feature
Mapping the Future of Urban Sprawl
Dave Theobald fights sprawl by charting it, one ranchette at a time.
By Alan Prendergast
Published: October 4, 2007
I'm going to show you a bunch of maps," David Theobald tells the undergraduates packed into the small lecture hall. "Don't get caught up writing down the numbers. I want you to...
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Feature
The Caged Life
Is Thomas Silverstein a prisoner of his own deadly past — or the first in a new wave of locked-down lifers?
By Alan Prendergast
Published: August 16, 2007
When the goon squad showed up at his place at five in the morning, Tommy Silverstein knew something was up. He wasn't accustomed to greeting guests at such an ungodly hour...
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Sidebar
Fortress of Solitude
The Bureau of Prisons is as good at keeping prisoners in as it is at keeping reporters out.
By Alan Prendergast
Published: August 16, 2007
A hundred miles southwest of Denver, the U.S. Penitentiary Administrative Maximum houses a killer lineup of mobsters (Salvatore "Sammy the Bull" Gravano), gang leaders (Barry...
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Feature
High Trauma
A dubious deal between a law firm and medical providers spins out — and accident victims feel their pain.
By Alan Prendergast
Published: July 19, 2007
From his Lakewood offices along the Sixth Avenue freeway frontage road, attorney David Mintz can see the towering 1-800-4INJURY sign in his parking lot and the blur of commuter...
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News
Darren Morrison's Virtual Aggression
Gun activists take their fire fight online.
By Alan Prendergast
Published: June 7, 2007
It takes all kinds, this argument over guns in America. Patriots and paranoids, cranks and constitutionalists, handwringers and Huns, they all step up to the plate sooner or...
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Feature
Too Many Fire Chiefs
Evergreen Fire/Rescue is burning money — and residents’ patience.
By Alan Prendergast
Published: May 24, 2007
After it was all over — the emergency meetings and votes of no confidence, the suspensions and resignations, the backroom intrigues and public squabbles, culminating in...
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News
Douglas Glaser on Ice
A catch-22 of an alias.
By Alan Prendergast
Published: May 17, 2007
A decade ago, wrestling with crushing legal and financial problems and looking at months of jail time, a cocky 26-year-old stockbroker named Douglas Alan Glaser decided to...
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Feature
The Hunt for Green
Sorting out the payday in Denver's new recycling plan.
By Alan Prendergast
Published: April 26, 2007
The trucks rumble through the gates of Waste Management Recycle America's plant in north Denver, lining up for their turn at the scales. A driver for the City of Thornton...
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News
Making Nice
Robert Schrier took the University of Colorado to court for academic freedom. The school settled before a jury could hear the tale.
By Alan Prendergast
Published: April 5, 2007
Earlier this year, officials at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center quietly settled a long-running lawsuit filed by Robert Schrier, one of their most...
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Follow That Story
When Mistakes Don't Matter
The Colorado Court of Appeals upholds a sentence based on questionable evidence.
By Alan Prendergast
Published: February 22, 2007
The justice system isn't very good at confessing its own crimes. Even when officials admit that mistakes were made, they rarely take the kind of action that might actually...
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