Fugitive Accidentally Shoots Accomplice

22-year-old Joshua Ringold, a murder fugitive in Mesa County, CO, eluded police after nearly being arrested following his accidental shooting of his own accomplice. The two were sought in the felony home invasion burglary of a Mesa County home. The two homeowners and Ringold’s 16-year-old accomplice were shot during the incident; the accomplice died.

There’s going to be a lot for Colorado criminal defense lawyers to sort out in this one—the dead accomplice, Cody R. English, was supposedly shot by accident during the confusion that resulted from an altercation with one of the homeowners, who allegedly struck one of the suspects with a lead pipe. The chest wound killed English, but the homeowner, who was also shot, survived the attack.

A third suspect in the case, 20-year-old Jeremiah Carey, has already been arrested and is being held without bond, charged with one count of aggravated robbery and burglary.

Police nearly caught Ringold once, tracking him to a house in the Orchard Mesa neighborhood, but he somehow managed to elude police and escape. Police have issued a reverse 9-1-1 warning to the neighborhood, advising residents that Ringold is still at large, should be considered armed and dangerous, and may even still be in the neighborhood.  Currently, Ringold “is being sought for investigation of murder, attempted murder, aggravated robbery, burglary, two counts of first degree assault and menacing,” a laundry list of crimes that, if he is convicted, will see him spending a great deal of time behind bars.

There have been so many homicides in Colorado this year—already more than 2010, with still a month to go; it’s a tragedy when such young people who should have their entire lives ahead of them fall into criminal patterns that lead to the violent deaths of other young people.

Colorado Killer Leads Police on Cat-and-Mouse Game

Travis Forbes is a dangerous man, the kind of potential serial killer who even gives Colorado criminal defense lawyers chills. It took police five months to unravel the network of lies, half-truths and fictions he wove around the murder of one young woman and the brutal sexual assault and attempted murder upon a second. Police say there was little doubt that he would’ve killed again, had they not been able to finally wring a believable confession out of him.

Police say that Forbes was masterful in crafting his cover-up stories—he had an excuse for every accusation and an angle to cover any discrepancy. They may never have caught him, had one of his victims survived the attack and provided crucial DNA evidence that allowed Forbes to be finally cornered to the point where he offered a confession in return for a plea deal—no death penalty and no sex crime charges.

The type of cat-and-mouse game on which Forbes led police for five months is not dissimilar to the dance performed in the courtroom when attorneys for the defense and prosecution attempt to unravel all the details in the web of whatever crime is being tried.

In many cases, the sheer lack of credibility a suspect like Forbes has, adds value to his defense attorney. It is not uncommon in trial to see as part of the defense that if the suspect is such a liar, that his confession must also be considered suspect.

In this case, however, the issue is moot, as Forbes cut a plea deal and as a result pled guilty to murder, being sentenced as a result to life in prison. Police have called the woman who survived Forbes’ attack a “super hero,” who had the courage and wherewithal not only to survive such a brutal assault, but to save the DNA evidence that eventually ended Forbes’ reign of terror.

Burglar on Probation Shoots Elderly Woman

Sometimes our criminal justice system isn’t rehabilitative enough. Sometimes punitive justice doesn’t work. Colorado criminal defense attorneys fight hard for the rights of the accused, and sometimes that battle goes on outside the courtroom, to ensure that those who are guilty are properly rehabilitated, rather than simply punished and taught to be better criminals before being unleashed back upon the world.

On November 25, 2011, a 21-year-old man who was on probation was arrested again, this time as a consequence of a burglary in which he allegedly shot and killed an 87-year-old former deacon.

Marcus Smith was already serving probation for second-degree burglary when police say he broke into the home of Kathryn “Kit” Grazioli, and during the course of robbing her house, shot her and left her body burning. All of the details of the crime have not been released, but from what information is available, it would seem that police have at least Smith’s fingerprints.

These sorts of felony crimes are shocking and tragic, perhaps made all the moreso in Colorado, where criminal law attorneys have had their hands full this year, with 26 homicides, up from 2010’s total of 24, and still a month to go. It really does make one wonder, however, whether our criminal justice system is working the way it should. It’s not proper to immediately assume Smith is guilty before he has a trial before his peers, but if he is found to be guilty of this crime, one must wonder how he ended up back on the streets, on probation, rather than in prison to begin with.

One could argue that Smith’s lawyer must have been top-notch, but even still, perhaps we need to take a closer look at how our system is or is not working, to avoid more dangerous criminals being put on probation rather than in jail.

Police Impersonator Commits Two Robberies

Who hasn’t, as a child, enjoyed a good game of “Cops and Robbers?” We all liked to pretend as kids, and many of us spent as much time arguing over who was the cop and who was the robber, as we did actually playing the assigned roles. But what happens when, in real life, the cop becomes the robber? Just such a thing happened—twice—in Denver this week, and the scenario is nightmarish, for Colorado criminal defense attorneys and everyone in Denver.

Impersonating a police officer is a very serious crime which in some states can range from a misdemeanor offense to a felony charge. In those states where misdemeanor level impersonation of a police officer exists, it would involve such things as attempting to arrest someone, writing bogus tickets, or similar acts where the perpetrator is pretending to be an officer of the law, but not committing other crimes as well.

However, in Colorado impersonation of a police officer is a felony and carries a sentence of up to eighteen months in jail. However, it is very often paired with other criminal charges which can vastly increase the associated jail time. Charges like this will affect the accused for the rest of his life—they are difficult to seal and can even affect your ability to get a job.

This particular scenario involved the alleged offender, described as a 5’7” tall, clean-shaven Hispanic male, using a flashlight to pull cars over. When the cars had pulled over, the accused, who wore a dark, police-like uniform complete with badge, approached the car, and proceeded to rob the inhabitants. Two cars were robbed in this manner within a very short period of each other, both in the mid-morning/early afternoon hours.

The suspect is, as of this writing, still at large, and there is a reward for any information leading to his capture.

Ten-Hour Airbase Standoff Ends with Surrender, Arrest

We see news stories about standoffs all too often these days. A domestic dispute escalates far beyond yelling and screaming, and one party ends up holding the other hostage while police SWAT teams spend hours outside the house, trying to either negotiate with the accused or otherwise force their surrender. The drama plays out before the public’s eyes with constant news updates, before the Colorado criminal defense attorneys ever even enter the picture.

What we don’t see every day, however, is a standoff at a United States air base. Just such a standoff happened recently at Schriever Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, home of the U.S. 50^th Space Wing. The standoff lasted for ten hours before the airman, whose name has not been released, surrendered and was taken into custody by police. Base operations were never seriously threatened, the base administration said. This is fortunate, as the 50^th Space Wing controls all U.S. military GPS Satellites—interruption of these services could have been disastrous.

What is known is that around 10:00 AM, an airman commandeered a building used for troop deployment, and that the cause of the standoff may be related to the fact that the airman was accused of prior misdoings and was facing discharge so that his prior case could be tried in civilian court, with civilian criminal law lawyers.

Truthfully, this is probably a blessing for the accused, as military justice tends to be far harsher than civilian law, though now in addition to his prior offenses he is going to have to face new charges; the offense of commandeering a building and causing a ten-hour standoff with police is likely to involve felony charges, even at the civilian level.

In any case, it’s a relief that the standoff is over. The airman’s future is in the hands of his attorneys, now.

Clinic Workers Cut Deal to Bring Down Pill Mill

A Colorado criminal law attorney has done his or her job well when not only is the client’s rights protected and the sentence proper, but when an even greater crime is stopped in the process. Just such a thing happened recently, when two clinic workers who had been arrested and charged on drug charges were sentenced to time served after they cut a deal to bring down their boss, who operated a clinic that allegedly served as a “pill mill,” freely distributing drugs such as oxycodone to addicts for purposes of substance abuse.

The judge seemed to feel that both women had stepped up to the plate and accepted responsibility for their own actions and roles in the drug distribution, and had on top of accepting responsibility, done a service to the state in cutting the deal to provide valuable information to the district attorney that shut down the entire operation.

Criminal law is strange and complicated, and not always black and white, as much as we would often like it to be. People are not just heroes or villains—sometimes bad situations drive people to take horrible actions, and sometimes those people are able to reconcile with society, reform, and rebuild their lives. It is the job of a strong and qualified criminal law attorney to stand up for the rights of the accused, yes, but also to encourage a guilty client to take responsibility for their actions.

People tend to view defense attorneys as the “bad guys” in the black and white arena of criminal law, but it’s just not the case. Very often, defense attorneys encourage their clients not only to plead guilty, but to cooperate fully with police investigations, and provide any information they can to help bring real criminals to justice.

Sentencing Scheduled in 2010 Colorado School Shooting Case

School shootings are some of the most heinous and tragic events imaginable. Colombine didn’t start the phenomenon, but it did change the landscape—ever since then there seems to have been a spate of shootings, not just at schools, but at shopping malls, even in an Amish community in Pennsylvania. Colorado has seen its share since that fateful day in 1999, and everyone dreads hearing about another shooting on the news.  Colorado criminal defense attorneys are no different; these sorts of cases are no fun to defend, to be sure.

A more recent shooting, in 2010, had what some consider to be an unsatisfactory result when the defendant, Bruco Strong Eagle Eastwood, was found not guilty by reason of insanity for his part in the wounding of two eighth graders at Deer Creek Middle School.  Now, however, the courts have found Eastwood guilty of firearms violations, an offense which carries up to 1 ½ years in prison.

Here are the questions people will be asking, whether they are everyday citizens, or attorneys specialized in felony crimes.  Is this sentence befitting the crime? If indeed Eastwood was competent to violate gun laws, was he competent to know what he was doing when he pulled the trigger? Should his sentence be more stiff?

On the other side of the coin, is this a disguised form of double-jeopardy? Should police and district attorneys be allowed to withhold charges just in case the first charge doesn’t stick, so they can have another go?

Still other questions: if Eastwood is indeed mentally incompetent, how will putting him in jail instead of a psychiatric facility do him any good at all?

If Eastwood is guilty—and it seems the courts have deemed him so—he should be incarcerated. The question at hand is, does the punishment fit the crime?  This is a core aspect of our legal system, and one of which criminal law attorneys must always be aware.

Nearly 450 DUI Arrests Occur over Halloween Weekend

Looks like Denver DUI Attorneys stand to be pretty busy over the coming weeks and months! This past Halloween weekend, Colorado State Police, along with 95 other law enforcement agencies all across the state began a major crackdown in enforcement of drunk driving laws; the result was 447 arrests of drivers under suspicion of driving while intoxicated.

Across the state, Denver posted the most arrests of any other jurisdiction, with a total of 58. Colorado Springs, Aurora, and Adams County also posted high numbers, though not near Denver’s lead.

The reason for this crackdown is that traditionally in Colorado, October is a rather deadly month. In 2010, there were seventeen deaths related to drunk driving, while in 2009 a whopping twenty-seven people died in alcohol-related car accidents.

DUI attorneys will help to make sure their clients’ rights are protected in cases like this, but drunk driving is no joke, nor is having a strong and qualified traffic law attorney a magic fix should you get arrested for the crime. The penalties for DUI are extremely stiff: the drivers in this October’s crackdown can face fines of up to $10,000, not to mention loss of driving privileges, court fees, and insurance increases—and this doesn’t take into account the jail time that can result from such offenses.

Offenses like this stay with you for the rest of your life. Even without jail time, a DUI offense can stay on your record for life, and can affect your life in more ways than this blog has the space to spell out. It’s amazing that even after all this time, with all of the information and education that’s out there about drunk driving, that so many people still get arrested for DUI offenses every year.

Vampire Attack in Denver—But Halloween is Over!

So as you might imagine, Denver criminal law attorneys have to defend more than our fair share of assault cases, ranging from parking lot fist fights to attempted robberies, to domestic violence cases. Assault is probably one of the most frequent forms of criminal charge levied—there are dozens if not hundreds of assault charges filed across the country every day. This is partially because we as a country have become hypersensitive to the idea of one-on-one violence, but the point is—attorneys see a lot of different kinds of assault charges and criminal law trial lawyers deal with some very crazy laws.

One thing that attorneys don’t get to see very often, however, is a real-life vampire attack.

On November 7, a woman allegedly walked into a convenience store and bit a customer and a clerk on the neck. Now Denver police are looking for the woman, who will likely find herself in need of a criminal law attorney pretty soon. Surveillance footage is available of the woman, who apparently left the store with a man driving a red sedan after the two attacks.

Denver crime stoppers is involved with the case as well, and is offering a $2,000 reward for information leading to the woman’s capture.

As to the woman’s motive, that has yet to be established, but it’s not a stretch to say it is highly unlikely that she was after their blood to slake her undead thirst. After all, don’t vampires only come out on Halloween?

It is interesting to note that the woman is said to have groped the customer she bit, and to have bitten the clerk after requesting a hug. Vampirism has become a fairly common sexual fetish over the past twenty years or so; is it possible the attacks were an effort to fulfill this fetish?

Or maybe the guy in the car just dared her to do it.

Talk about Bad Luck! Longview Man Plows Police

Sometimes you hear about an alleged drunk driving accident wherein nobody got hurt, that just reeks of bad luck to the point where even though you know the poor guy on the receiving end was entirely in the wrong, you can’t help but feel just a little bad for him.  Even a Denver DUI attorney has to get a chuckle out of such stories.  In fact, just such a thing happened on November 8 outside of a Longview, CO, bar.

A man had allegedly been evicted (“with difficulty,” according to bar owners) from the bar after a night of heavy drinking.  He got into his car—never a good idea when you’ve been drinking—and left the bar, driving at about 10 miles per hour.

When police tried to engage the man to make him pull over, one pulled up behind him and one in front.  Instead of pulling over, he drove his car directly into one of the police vehicles…and then backed up and hit the one behind him!

If there were a portrait of how to make a bad situation worse, this would be it. This is a guy who sorely needs to obtain the services of a good dui lawyer, because there’s going to be consequences far beyond your usual driving while intoxicated conviction, if indeed he is found guilty of said charge.

In fact, things get worse for the driver, whose name has not been released. Police have said that he is an habitual offender, with over twenty-five past violations, as well as current restrictions on his license.

Drunk driving, of course, is no laughing matter, but when something like this happens, there’s so much bad luck involved (along with bad judgment) that one can’t help feel just a bit of pity for the alleged offender.