Subject: Criminal Sentencing and Punishment

• Reporting Live from Supermax

  August 10, 2007

• Understaffing the Supermax

  August 28, 2007

• The Latest Supermax Threat: Elderly British Ladies

  September 10, 2007

• The Last Six to Face Life for Juvenile Crimes

  September 19, 2007

• "60 Minutes" in the Slammer

  October 11, 2007

• The Last Juvie to Face Life?

  October 18, 2007

• Life Without Parole: The Sentencing of Michael Tate

  November 2, 2007

• Throwing the Book at Parole

  November 8, 2007

• 24 Years of Solitude, Then the Lawsuit

  November 28, 2007

• The Pen is Mightier Than the Pen

  January 17, 2008

• Carol Chambers Seeks Cheaper Executions

  February 28, 2008

• Pandering Over Parole at the Statehouse

  March 20, 2008

• Shmuck of the Week

  April 4, 2008

• Profiles in Snitching

  April 7, 2008

• A Supermax Slaughter Cuts Both Ways

  April 16, 2008

• Life in the Florence Prison: It's a Riot

  April 22, 2008

• Swapping One McPrison for Another

  May 15, 2008

• A Prison Murder on the Web?

  May 22, 2008

• Death of a Cowboy

  June 11, 2008

• Death to Sir Mario

  June 17, 2008

• Kudos for "The Caged Life"

  July 11, 2008

• Breaking News: Joe Principe's standoff with the cops ends badly

  Three views of Joe Principe. The call came into my voicemail Monday morning, November 17. "I'm calling to give you the exclusive rights to a standoff with the government," the voice said. "I'm not going to leave my house. They're jamming me up again… after all this nonsense that I've been through already, I'm just going to say no. I've got everything rigged. Even if they try to get in, it will take hours. This might get good. Call me." The caller left no name, but I knew who it was. I

  November 19, 2008

• Josh Penry's fears about a plethora of parolees a big mythtake

  Josh Penry (pictured here) wasn't a happy man at the legislative hearing on parole policy December 8, and that's probably a good thing. Penry, the Fruita Republican state senator who takes a back seat to no one in his tough-on-crime posturing, has been hollering about the supposedly alarming increase in early release, better known as discretionary parole, among state inmates under Governor Bill Ritter's watch -- the subject of my earlier blog, "Pandering Over Parole at the Statehouse." But a re

  December 9, 2008

• Death Sentence

  A bureaucratic loophole limits halfway house residents' access to health care, making it harder to survive on the outside.

  December 6, 2007

• So... you want to contact Joe Nacchio in prison?

  The Federal Correctional Institution in Schuylkill, Pennsylvania, where Joe Nacchio will be staying for quite a while. Today's a big day for former Qwest CEO Joe Nacchio -- the day when he must report to the Federal Correctional Institution in Schuylkill, Pennsylvania and begin serving his six-year insider-trading sentence. Last week, we offered Nacchio advice about how to spend his last six weeks of freedom, as well as tips about how to get along with his new peer group -- fellow convicts. But

  April 14, 2009

• Om Time

  November 13, 2008

• Can a troubled Colorado prison change the way inmates think?

  November 6, 2008

• Playing Their Hand

  Two would-be hit men strike a deal in Jeffco.

  November 29, 2007

• Bad Execution

  April 10, 2008

• 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.

  February 28, 2008

• Inmates Waitin' Around to Die

  Only one man is on death row, but seven others are waiting in the wings.

  February 28, 2008

• Pro and Con

  Amadeus Harlan has spent his life playing everyone around him — but not as a Denver Bronco.

  January 31, 2008

• 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.

  November 15, 2007

• That's Life

  A new law reduces sentences for some juvenile murderers.

  September 20, 2007

• Fortress of Solitude

  The Bureau of Prisons is as good at keeping prisoners in as it is at keeping reporters out.

  August 16, 2007

• The Caged Life

  Is Thomas Silverstein a prisoner of his own deadly past — or the first in a new wave of locked-down lifers?

  August 16, 2007

• Is the death penalty worse than life in the hole?

  Last week, a bill to end the death penalty in Colorado squeaked through the House of Representatives by one vote; it reaches a Senate committee on Wednesday afternoon, April 29. The abolitionists maintain that execution is too costly and time-consuming and that the money could be better spent funding a statewide unit to investigate the 1,400 unsolved murders in Colorado over the past forty years.For more on the basic "trade vengeance for justice" argument, see Jessica Centers' 2008 feature "A

  April 28, 2009

• Death-penalty bill: Politicos willing to raise taxes to keep the killing option open

  A Flickr photo You've got to admit it was a legislative masterstroke. As a House-passed bill to end capital punishment in Colorado and use the approximately $900,000 in savings to investigate so-called "cold cases" neared a Senate vote, opponents led by Democratic senator John Morse and Republican senator Josh Penry came up with a compromise: Keep the death penalty and finance a cold-case team via an additional $2.50 surcharge on those convicted of a crime. There's another vote today, and suppo

  May 5, 2009

• Colorado Crimes: Welcome back, Ronald F. Thrasher

  Betcha there's one of these babies in Mr. Thrasher's future. According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, Ronald F. Thrasher, formerly of Colorado Springs, has been on the run for the past fourteen years. That's not entirely true: He's probably rested a time or two since 1995, when he fled custody before he could be sentenced for assorted drug- and gun-related violations. And he'll have many more leisure opportunities in the future, considering that he was captured in Texas last month and returned

  May 27, 2009

• Mile High Murder: Three's hardly a crowd on Colorado death row after Robert Ray's sentence

  Robert Ray. Yesterday, Robert Ray was sentenced to death in connection with the 2005 murders of Javad Marshall-Fields and his fiancee, Vivian Wolfe -- a verdict that duplicated the one previously given to Ray's accomplice, Sir Mario Owens. The ruling brings the population of Colorado's death row to three; Nathan Dunlap, who was convicted in 1996 of four slayings at a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant, is the third member of this ignominious group. Both Owens and Ray were on a list of "Inmates Waitin'

  June 9, 2009

• Male guards and female prisoners -- a brilliant idea!

  Photo by John Johnston There's plenty to get disgusted about in the story of a Colorado female inmate who was awarded $1.3 million in damages for two years' worth of sexual assaults by a male guard. As this report in the Denver Post recounts, federal judge David Ebel blasted the Colorado Department of Corrections for its failure to protect prisoners from predatory staff. The inmate already settled with the state for $250,000; she probably will have little luck collecting the seven-figure punit

  June 12, 2009

• Former Bronco Travis Henry sentenced to three years in prison

  Travis Henry during his locker-room days. Back in September, former Denver Broncos running back Travis Henry was arrested in relation to a series of cocaine-related charges -- but because the drugs in question were found in Montana, the trial took place there rather than in Denver. That proceeding ended today with Henry earning 36 months in the pokey for his actions. Read the official account of the sentencing by clicking "Continue."

  July 15, 2009

• Life on the street for homeless parolees: "It sucks"

  ​Three years ago, in a feature titled "Over and Over Again," I looked at one of the primary reasons for the staggering failure rate of parolees in Colorado. That would be the fact that more and more prisoners are paroling homeless, with no job prospects and little preparation for what they're going to face living in a shelter or on the street. Before long the majority of them end up back in prison -- not for new crimes, usually, but for technical violations of their parole conditions, like

  August 5, 2009

• Colorado Crimes: Daniel Lujan gets thirty years for shooting eight-year old

  Daniel Lujan.​Reminder: Doing a really idiotic thing can have a lifetime's worth of repercussions. Exhibit A: Daniel Lujan, who received a thirty-year sentence yesterday for responding to an argument over a bicycle sale last year by firing a shot that perforated an eight-year-old girl (she recovered, but only after multiple surgeries). The judge in the case called the choice "stupid," and it's hard to argue with that logic. Read the Denver District Attorney's Office release about the sent

  August 7, 2009

• In the Florence pen, it's risky not to join the riot

  ​The dysfunctional high-security federal penitentiary in Florence has been the scene of all sorts of gang-related mayhem, from the grisly 1999 disembowelment of inmate Joey Estrella to the 2008 racial uprising in the yard, in which guards fired on brawling prisoners and killed two (as reported in "Life in the Florence Prison: It's a Riot"). But recently filed court documents dealing with last year's riot suggest it can be just as dangerous to be a noncombatant at USP Florence when all he

  October 2, 2009

• For sale: supermax prison, like new

  ​State representative Glenn Vaad was appalled to discover recently that corrections officials have delayed opening a $200-million supermax because of Colorado's fiscal woes. There's nothing that offends Vaad, a Republican who represents the Greeley area, more deeply than the idea of a brand-new lockup sitting empty, forlornly bereft of the clientele it was built to serve. Vaad has called the situation "unconscionable," and he's proposed selling Colorado State Penetentiary II to a private

  October 13, 2009

• Scott "Fear Factor" McInnis is very, very concerned about your safety

  ​Governor Bill Ritter's modest proposal to parole hundreds of inmates a few weeks or months before their mandatory release date, thereby cutting millions from the state budget, has become the political whipping boy for his most opportunistic critics, from GOP legislators to Weld County District Attorney (and Senate candidate) Ken Buck to the hand-wringing editorial board over at the Denver Post. But nobody has stomped on the issue with more enthusiasm than gubernatorial opponent Scott Mc

  October 19, 2009

• Clemency for these six prisoners could save millions and serve justice -- so why won't Governor Ritter try it?

  October 22, 2009

• Before Ritter, Colorado's governors proved that clemency's risks came with rewards

  October 22, 2009

• Bronson

  October 29, 2009