Members of the legal community were surprised and angry three months ago, when Gilpin County District Judge Kenneth Barnhill and prosecutor Jim Stanley had the temerity to try a juror for criminal contempt of court after she declined to convict a defendant in a drug case. The action, considered by…

Where does free enterprise end and profiteering begin? The answer depends on which side of the dollar you’re on. And in this case, Denver city officials are caught in the middle. Manager of Safety Fidel “Butch” Montoya has been called upon to mediate a dispute between the manager of a…

The announcement that a Denver victims’ assistance board is providing $50,000 to aid victims of the Oklahoma City bombing has created a schism among local advocates: While they agree that Denver should welcome the victims with open arms, some are balking at opening the city’s pocketbooks to them as well…

Quentin Jones’s cheek pressed into the grit of the asphalt parking lot. His head was immobilized by the nightstick a cop had jammed into his neck, and his arms and legs were pinned down by other officers. From the corner of his eye, sixteen-year-old Quentin could see that his father–who…

A federal jury took just one hour earlier this month to decide that former Denver deputy sheriff Trina Burks-Richardson should receive nothing in her wrongful-discharge suit against the city. In addition, Burks-Richardson was ordered to pay the city’s attorney’s fees. The city, however, is going to have to wait in…

Denver law enforcement authorities have long feared that the Oklahoma City bombing trial might attract riffraff, troublemakers whose presence in town would lead to friction or even violence. And the cops were right. So far, there’s been at least one adolescent shovefest, a fight over money and a threat of…

It took years for Mary, a native of Peru, to escape the brutality and fear that her life in Denver had become. She finally worked up the nerve two years ago, when she took her five-year-old daughter and slipped away from the house where her American husband had virtually imprisoned…

Politicians’ claims to the contrary, Colorado’s business climate isn’t all blue skies and sunshine. Just ask the folks at Juniper Valley Products, an umbrella group of production and manufacturing companies whose sprightly name dresses up the fact that its employees are prison inmates. The bottom line is that state prison…

It’s been five years, one federal trial and at least $30,000 since the Denver Sheriff’s Department fired deputy Trina Burks-Richardson for allegedly going trigger-happy in a Texas town. But the tortuous legal proceedings–including a federal judge’s surprising backtracking–may end soon, if not necessarily happily, for the city and its taxpayers…

In the weeks before her adopted son died, Greeley business owner Renee Polreis told friends she had come to fear David. Where others saw a delightful two-year-old towhead, she saw a monster who was destroying her marriage and making life, in her own words, a living hell. David’s tantrums were…

Seven years ago, the Colorado legislature passed a law designed to put the bite on convicted criminals. The concept was sterling: to force lawbreakers who had money to reimburse the state or the county for the cost of their incarceration. In theory, such a bill would offset the cost of…

The families of three Maryland murder victims lost the first round in a wrongful-death suit against Boulder’s Paladin Press, but their attorneys vow to keep their teeth in Paladin’s nether regions for years to come. “We will continue to litigate this case until we reach the last court and the…

Former Fort Morgan pharmacist and self-confessed morphine addict Andrew Komesu was lucky to get out of Colorado with little more than a slap on the wrist. Now, however, he just might be forced to make a return visit–a possibility that both satisfies and frustrates drug-enforcement officers. In 1995, Komesu served…

Colorado Springs babysitter Wanda Crawford was 66 years old in 1994 when she was found guilty of shaking a nine-month-old infant so severely that the baby was left brain-damaged and permanently disabled. So abhorrent was the crime that, despite Crawford’s age and the fact that it was her first felony…

When a Colorado prison inmate brought suit against the Department of Corrections four years ago alleging discrimination against disabled inmates and claiming that the prisons fail to comply with the Americans With Disabilities Act, lawyers with the Colorado Attorney General’s office denounced the charges as erroneous and “premature.” They were…

The Insiders It’s not easy getting old in prison. But in Colorado, it’s getting easier. The number of elderly felons being held in the state prison system is expected to soar dramatically in coming years, as an increasing number of life sentences continue to tick away. And, afraid of being…

The Insiders There is a private garden in the Colorado prison system, a place where convicted killers can tend flowers and summer vegetables alongside rapists, burglars and thieves–all in the name of mental therapy. The small but immaculate plot sits behind the gates of the state’s newest penitentiary, a facility…

One day last week, LoDo artist Jorg “Peter” Schmitz accompanied his girlfriend, Ingrid Pfennig, on a shopping trip to the Cherry Creek Mall. “He was trying to get her to buy all these slutty things,” says an employee of one trendy clothing store. “When she hesitated, he told her, ‘You…

I’m doing a good job of being disappearing,” LoDo artist Jorg “Peter” Schmitz says in lilting, German-accented English. He sounds proud of the accomplishment, and perhaps he should be. Schmitz is the man of the hour, the person whom everyone–including members of a Denver grand jury–wants to talk to. And…

Employees say Guadalupe “Lupe” Salinas occasionally walked around Denver’s Social Security Administration office downtown crowing about his job and his good fortune. “Oh, it feels so good to be king!” the regional commissioner reportedly would say. The king is dead. Salinas, who was appointed commissioner of the agency’s six-state Denver…

Faculty members at the University of Oklahoma journalism school are split over Melissa Klinzing’s decision to leave an Oklahoma City television station to accept a post as news director for KMGH/Channel 7 in Denver. Assistant professor Bill Loving says that some of his colleagues were delighted to hear that Klinzing–who…

When Mayor Wellington Webb’s stepson Keith Thomas clipped a parked car March 31 and kept on driving, it wasn’t the first time he’d “hit and run,” says a former business associate. In fact, claims bar owner Chester Johnson, after he fired Thomas for alleged misuse of funds last fall, Thomas…