Tony Blue’s 64-year prison sentence for armed robbery has been overturned after his attorneys discovered that the state’s star witness in the case had been found mentally incompetent in another criminal prosecution 20 years earlier.
Two years after we told you about Melvin Lewis’s arrest for punching his girlfriend amid an argument in which she killed a dog, he’s back in the news again. This time, he’s accused of stealing from bags at Denver International Airport, where he worked, and his specific focus is said to have been guns.
Aurora theater shooter James Holmes has been on the move within the prison system since a 2015 attack on him by Mark “Slim” Daniels, who apologized in a letter to our Alan Prendergast for being unable to send the man who killed twelve people and injured seventy others at the Aurora Century 16 theater on July 20, 2012, to “Satan’s lake of fire.” Now, for the first time in more than a year, we finally know his location. At present, he’s being held at the United States penitentiary in Allenwood, Pennsylvania.
Instead of ending his career, Matt Vogl’s raw honesty about his bipolar diagnosis and thoughts of suicide opened a new chapter. Four years later, he heads the National Mental Health Innovation Center, an Anschutz Foundation-backed, $10 million startup of his own design.
David Flores doesn’t mind if stories linger online about his 2010 arrest for bank robbery. He was definitely guilty of committing the crime, as he readily admits. But what pisses him off is that those articles portray him as an idiot who was literally caught red handed after trying to use stolen currency stained, along with his fingers, by a dye pack that exploded as he made his getaway. He insists that the truth is a lot more complicated, and a lot less dumb.
The Colorado Department of Corrections is recalculating the possible parole dates of close to 3000 inmates, in the wake of two court decisions indicating that the state is keeping prisoners behind bars for months or years longer than their intended sentences.
Montrose County, on Colorado’s Western Slope, has pulled its sex offender list offline, reportedly because of a recent court ruling in which U.S. District Court Judge Richard Matsch found that such registries constituted cruel and unusual punishment in the case of three plaintiffs. The action was taken despite the fact that the ruling is specific to the complainants in question, rather than everyone on the roster, and Colorado Attorney General Cynthia Coffman has announced her intention to appeal.
Just shy of 4:30 a.m. today, September 20, the Denver Police Department tweeted about a shooting near the intersection of 31st and Marion Street. The condition of the victim, who was transported to a local hospital after reportedly being found in a car, isn’t known at this time. But the incident is one more indication that gentrification in the RiNo, Cole and Whittier neighborhoods hasn’t stopped the violence that has afflicted the area in the recent past.
On Sunday, September 17, as we’ve reported, the local animal activist group Denver Baby Animal Save posted a video about what it characterizes as a rescue of three chickens from Long Shadow Farm in Berthoud. Larry and Kristin Ramey, the co-owners of the farm, call it something else: theft that involved a demonstration they believe was staged as a diversion, “terrible” music, undercover operatives, lies and taking advantage of an eight-year-old.
Yesterday, September 17, Denver Baby Animal Save posted a Facebook video detailing what the activist group characterizes as the rescue of three chickens from a local business identified elsewhere online as Long Shadow Farm in Berthoud. The clip, on view below, has resulted in an explosion of responses on social media, prompting a debate about whether this action constituted a bold gesture on behalf of respect for all living creatures or criminal behavior.
A judge’s lengthy decision in the capital case against Sir Mario Owens a good indication of how complex the case has become through more than a decade of legal maneuvering.
Earlier this year, Stephen Hamper was found guilty on multiple counts in the beating of a Denver police officer who he said he would have killed if only he’d been able to get hold of her gun. Since that ruling, he’s allegedly attacked two more law enforcers while in custody awaiting a hearing to determine if he’s a habitual criminal.
U.S. District Court Judge Richard Matsch recently ruled that Colorado’s sex-offender registry violates the due-process rights of three plaintiffs, thereby amounting to cruel and unusual punishment. Boulder attorney Alison Ruttenberg, who’s kept the case going for the past four years, lauded this decision because it acknowledged that treating every person on the registry like a violent child predator was patently unfair. But she’s not surprised Colorado Attorney General Cynthia Coffman has announced her intention to appeal the decision, especially given rumors that she’s weighing a run for Colorado governor in 2018.
According to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Ken and Lynn Kubic are facing 72 charges of cruelty to animals after authorities discovered that the conditions in their Adams County home were every bit as shocking as those that caused Jurassic Pets, their former business in Thornton, to be shuttered. This claim is supported by photos and a video on view here that makes the couple’s residence look like the set of a horror movie.
After more than two years, the prosecution of a massive federal drug investigation dubbed Operation Black Rhino is nearly over thanks to the conviction of Jorge Loya-Ramirez, a Mexican citizen living in Denver who allegedly used a taco truck as cover to deal nearly 200 pounds of methamphetamine and cocaine in kilogram quantities. And he wasn’t the only Black Rhino target to earn punishment. The U.S. Attorney’s Office reveals that of the 38 others named in one of four federal grand jury indictments related to the inquiry, only one had his case dismissed. Find out what happened to all the defendants below.
An Alamosa judge has dismissed all charges against Krystal Voss, who served more than a decade in prison in the death of her son.
Former Boulder County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Tyler Mason is currently on probation after reportedly taking a plea deal following accusations that he’d attempted to smuggle marijuana edibles into Boulder County Jail.
Shawn Geerdes has been ordered to spend 144 years in prison for murder and arson in the death of Jason Dosa, his partner in a cannabis business. The length of the sentence speaks to the brutality of the crime, Geerdes’s hefty previous criminal history and the determination of the 18th Judicial District DA’s office, headed by 2018 gubernatorial candidate George Brauchler, who maintained in a recent Westword op-ed that at least eleven marijuana-related homicides have taken place in his jurisdiction since limited legalization of recreational pot in January 2014.
As our Alan Prendergast reported, U.S. District Court Judge Richard Matsch has ruled that Colorado’s sex-offender registry violates the due-process rights of three plaintiffs, thereby amounting to cruel and unusual punishment. Boulder attorney Alison Ruttenberg, who filed the case in 2013, sees the opinion as the potential death knell for a law-enforcement tool that, in her view, perpetuates factually dubious notions that fall apart when examined in an evenhanded way.
Shortly after the in-custody suicide of Benjamin Davis, leader of the 211 crew, a notorious white-supremacist prison gang, alleged 211 member Kirk Boyd has been sentenced to decades in stir for a crime spree that prosecutors say stretched over a five-week period and was fueled by methamphetamines.
More than eighteen years after 18th Judicial District deputy DA Rebecca Bartee’s June 7, 1999 murder, authorities have made an arrest, booking Robert Lee Williams, a seventy-year-old who was still living in the apartment building where the slaying took place. The case was broken thanks to a tip received by CBS4 reporter Brian Maass earlier this year, yet multiple news agencies in Colorado aren’t giving credit where credit’s due.
Denver City Council has announced a plan to purchase PT’s All Nude II, a defunct strip club at 8315 East Colfax, for $1.3 million, in an effort to spur an economic revival in the area. The building was shuttered in 2016 because of numerous public-safety issues, with the most prominent among them being a September 2015 murder on an evening promoted as #SelfieSaturday.
