“Strangers are using smartphone apps with GPS to track down children and have sex with them.” That’s the word from the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office and the 18th Judicial District Attorney’s Office, which want to warn parents about the dangers of smartphone apps such Grindr and Blendr, which allow adults…
Did Henry Ford really make a car out of hemp? Was the Declaration of Independence written on hemp paper? Did Abraham Lincoln use hemp oil in his lamps? The hemp plant, a variety of Cannabis sativa that’s the subject of this week’s cover story “Green Acres,” is steeped in lore…
George Washington loved hemp. Our nation’s first president thought so much of the plant that he once famously wrote to his gardener, “Make the most of the Indian hemp seed, and sow it everywhere.” But Washington’s interests didn’t lie in smoking hemp, marijuana’s less famous cousin. A variety of Cannabis…
This week’s cover story, “Green Acres,” is all about hemp: its past (outlawed by the feds), its present (resurrected thanks to Amendment 64) and what advocates say is a promising agricultural future. That past includes a push by the federal government during World War II to encourage farmers to grow…
Update below: James Holmes, the suspect in the July 20 shooting at an Aurora movie theater that killed twelve people and wounded seventy others, was widely expected to plead not guilty by reason of insanity at an arraignment hearing today. Instead, Judge William Sylvester entered a not-guilty plea for Holmes…
The judge in the Aurora theater shooting case has settled on the advisement that he will read to James Holmes should the suspect plead not guilty by reason of insanity at tomorrow’s arraignment. It includes warnings that if Holmes enters such a plea, he’ll be subject to a court-ordered psychiatric…
A plea deal in the case of Rollin Oliver, the 22-year-old charged with murder in the shooting death of Denver police officer Celena Hollis last June, may be in the works, according to a court document. “There is a possible disposition in this matter,” notes the register of actions, which…
Colorado’s insanity defense laws are constitutional and any court-ordered mental evaluation that Aurora theater shooting suspect James Holmes might undergo would not violate his right against self-incrimination, prosecutors argue in motions made public Wednesday. The arguments are in response to five motions filed by Holmes’s attorneys last week in which…
A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by the owner of a pet treat factory in the River North neighborhood, who sued the city and three neighbors for conspiring against him. As explained in our cover story, “Raising a Stink,” Ray Kasel of Kasel Associates Industries took issue with…
Aurora theater shooting suspect James Holmes “is considering entering” a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity, according to motions filed by his attorneys. The motions — which are on view below — ask the court to clarify certain aspects of the state’s insanity defense laws, including the terms…
Colorado’s largest legal syringe access program gave out 116,671 clean needles in 2012 — and safely disposed of 71,323 dirty ones. An infographic of statistics from the Harm Reduction Action Center’s first ten months of operation (it began exchanging needles from its location in Denver last February) also shows that…
Foster parents are allowed to fully participate in court hearings about whether to terminate biological parents’ rights, the Colorado Supreme Court has ruled. The ruling comes out of a case involving a young boy in Montezuma County, who went into foster care after suffering repeated abuse while in the care…
Back in December, we told you about a group of neighbors in RiNo who have been raising a stink over what they say are “putrid” smells coming from a pet treat factory called Kasel Associates Industries. The same month that the factory’s owner sued the neighbors for harassment, batches of…
Denver Zoo elephant Dolly has a new lady friend — 42-year-old Kimbo the elephant, who has come from the Fort Worth Zoo in Texas to live in Denver. Kimbo brings the Denver Zoo’s Asian elephant population back up to four. It had declined by one when the eldest of the…
Students in Denver’s public schools will no longer be ticketed by police for minor infractions, such as using bad language or getting into a scuffle in which no one is hurt, according to the terms of an agreement signed today by superintendent Tom Boasberg and Denver police chief Robert White…
Last year, lawmakers approved new film incentives to lure Hollywood back to Colorado after movie-makers had largely abandoned the state for cheaper locales. Seven months into the program, nearly $4 million in rebates and other perks have been approved. The lineup of movies that will say “Action!” in Colorado includes…
Mall Santa Bill Lee has gotten sixteen more of his seized animals back. That number doesn’t include any reindeer, though. Not yet. As we explained in our cover story, “Santa is Grounded,” Clear Creek County animal-control officers seized about one hundred of Lee’s animals last year and slapped him with…
Update: In an order dated February 11, Judge William Sylvester denied the city of Aurora’s request to lift a gag order in place since the early days of the theater shooting case. The city asked for permission “to speak publicly about the city’s response to the theater shootings, and to…
It seems that Bill Sullivan, the subject of our story “Operation Cock Block,” isn’t out of trouble with the Securities and Exchange Commission just yet. A federal judge has rejected an effort to settle the fraud case against Sullivan and another man, Michael Turnock, who are accused of carrying out…
Employers would be allowed to fire employees for smoking marijuana off-site under a recommendation endorsed by the Amendment 64 Task Force on Tuesday. Members also voted to support a marijuana DUI bill and to recommend education for juveniles in possession of less than an ounce of pot. But they couldn’t…
New York Times columnist Frank Bruni has weighed in on the story first reported in Westword two weeks ago about a father’s attempt to sue a Catholic hospital for the wrongful death of his wife and unborn twin sons. Bruni sums up the way the Catholic hospital reacted — by…
Catholic Health Initiatives has acknowledged that it was “morally wrong” for its lawyers to argue in court that fetuses aren’t people. As explained in our cover story “The Meaning of Life,” the Englewood-based operator of 78 Catholic hospitals in seventeen states claimed that it couldn’t be held liable for the…
