A new report on the use of solitary confinement in America’s prisons and jails, highly critical of the practice and challenging many common myths about who’s in lockdown and why, looks closely at recent reform efforts in the Colorado prison system and concludes that many inmates can be removed from…
In January, Frank Ruybalid, the embattled top prosecutor for Colorado’s Third Judicial District, resolved a long-running state ethics investigation by pleading guilty to thirteen violations of professional conduct rules for attorneys, essentially admitting that he’d mishandled the prosecution of several criminal cases that ended up being dismissed. Ruybalid was put…
When Dennis Gallagher steps down as city auditor in nine weeks, at the end of his third and final term, his departure will mark the end of one of the most impressive — and long-lived — careers in elected office in state history. Gallagher was an obscure thirty-year-old speech professor…
In a move that could have far-reaching implications for the the West’s ailing coal industry, a federal judge in Denver has ruled that U.S. Department of Interior officials failed to follow the law in approving expansion plans at two Colorado coal-mining operations — and that the agency has an obligation,…
Most of the Denver residents old enough to remember the 1965 flood were, of course, quite young at the time — some in their teens or twenties, others mere children on the night the South Platte brought the city to its knees. To a kid, an event of such magnitude…
Lots of stuff gets lost in the sausage-making process that is the Colorado General Assembly. Amid all the pitched battles over gun magazines and the rights of the unborn, bills pushing education or sentencing reforms often get short shrift. This year is no different; activists hoping to see some significant…
The scenic, tourist-oriented town of Salida doesn’t see many murder trials. This may be one reason that a prison homicide case getting underway there today has generated so much unease and unusual security measures — to the extent of anticipated road closures near the courthouse and concerns raised by the…
“The VA has a systemic problem,” Representative Mike Coffman said yesterday at a congressional hearing probing government waste. He was, of course, referring to the disastrous efforts by the Department of Veteran Affairs to build a new hospital in Aurora, a project that’s now more than a billion dollars over…
The Colorado Supreme Court sided with the Colorado Department of Corrections this week in squelching a long-simmering, convoluted debate over whether the state isn’t properly calculating credits that take time off inmates’ sentences. It’s a decision that reinforces the status quo, saves one of the state’s largest bureaucracies from untold…
With a million-dollar war chest, the deadline past for any new candidates and a lack of strong opposition, Michael B. Hancock is a shoo-in for re-election as Denver’s mayor on May 5. Over the past four years he’s presided over a roaring economy, the rollout of recreational marijuana sales, and…
A five-year effort to prosecute a hunting-guide operation responsible for the illegal killing of close to fifty bobcats and a dozen mountain lions came to a muted close in federal court in Denver yesterday, as the last defendant in the case was sentenced for his part in the scheme. Nicholaus…
This past week wasn’t a particularly bright one for criminal justice reform advocates in Colorado, as two high-profile parolees fell under scrutiny for less-than-stellar behavior. First came a 9News report about how Joaquin Garcia, a 30-year-old man with a criminal past that includes gang activity and car theft, is currently…
Like most military veterans, Wayne Littrell is accustomed to the foot-dragging, the red tape, the hurry-up-and-wait mentality involved in dealing with the government. He’s aware of the news reports concerning the scandalous delays and neglect that thousands of vets have endured when seeking medical care and other benefits from the…
As discussed here a few weeks ago, a new report issued by the Prison Policy Initiative takes a harsh look at the burgeoning video visitation business in prisons and jails. More than 500 detention facilities across the country now contract with private companies to provide some form of pay-to-visit technology for families of…
An audio recording of a 2007 police shooting that turned a nineteen-year-old car thief suspect into a quadriplegic — and set up a long-running battle over his care in the state prison system — appears to contradict official accounts of how the shooting went down. And Darrell Havens says the…
The campaign to seek national monument designation status for a rugged stretch of canyons, meadows and forests between Buena Vista and Salida, which recently shifted from a long-running battle in Congress to a call for executive action, is about to pay off. President Barack Obama is expected to announce this…
This week’s cover story, “The Long Way Home,” examines the unusual, long-running fallout from a fatal hit-and-run on the streets of Aurora. The 1991 incident took the life of one sixteen-year-old, Danny Goetsch, and sent another, Dietrick Mitchell, to the state prison system – where he remains 24 years later,…
On a freakishly warm Tuesday in February, a group of activists gathered downtown to announce that they are bringing their anti-fracking campaign to Denver. More specifically, they are bringing it to Hizzoner, Denver Mayor Michael Hancock, urging him to impose a moratorium on oil and gas drilling in the city…
Among the inmates marking time in a prison yard, it’s not hard to pick out the ones who were sent into the adult system when they were still teenagers, before they had a chance to become men. Despite long years of trying to fit in, there’s a kind of awkwardness…
They were the most notorious yet least-seen artifacts from one of the worst school shootings in American history — roughly four hours of home videos made by two teenage killers-to-be, shot in the last weeks of their lives and offering glimpses into the methods and motives behind the 1999 attack…
These are not the best of times for the criminal justice system in Trinidad. The city and two of its police detectives are being sued by the ACLU of Colorado, which claims the detectives fabricated and misrepresented evidence in a 2013 drug investigation that led to the arrests of forty…
Jails across America are turning increasingly to private companies to cure the headaches posed by family members seeking to visit incarcerated loved ones. But the solutions developed by the emerging “video visitation industry” come at a steep price — including the stiff costs shouldered by inmates’ families, complaints about poor…
