In 1996, Ms. Tsehaye helped bring her distant cousin, Tsehai Hagos, a non-English-speaking woman to the U.S.  Hagos shared a bedroom with Tsehaye’s mother while Tsehaye paid her expenses and urged her to get a job.  Hagos lived in the house for about eleven years after which she moved in with other relatives.  These relatives and Hagos then proceded to shake down Ms. Tsehaye, claiming that she had enslaved Hagos in their house and trying to extort back wages.

It was immediately clear that Hago’s story about enslavement was full of gaping holes and contradicted by video tapes, photographs, and independant eyewitnesses all of which showed a person (Hago) who was neither enslaved nor hidden away from the rest of society.

Instead of trying to resolve this case outside of trial, the Araphoe DA’s Office opted to try the case, claiming that Tsehaye was involved in “human trafficking,” insensitive to the fact that immigrants commonly assist in bringing family members from other coutries to the U.S.

Jurors who acquitted Ms. Tsehaye saw right through the “victim’s” claims and recognized Hagos’ motivation to make up claims “so she could stay in the country.”

“In the DA’s office’s agenda to prosecute so overzealously, it seems that the facts of a case aren’t really an objective,” says Chris Cashbaugh, foreman of the jury that cleared Ruth Tsehaye at trial.

Read more: http://www.denverpost.com/greene/ci_14527067#ixzz0hvElU23H

 Carol Chambers has overstepped again — this time by illegally funding her prosecution of a high-profile murder case, a judge has ruled.

“A district attorney’s obligation is greater than obtaining convictions,” reads an order Tuesday by District Judge Stanley Brinkley.

“A conviction, if it is to be obtained, must be accomplished by obedience to the law. Otherwise, the prosecution is no different than those the prosecutor is required to prosecute.”

Read more: http://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_14282987#ixzz0euDWY0tQ

The court found that Carol Cambers and the Arapahoe County District Attorney’s Office broke state law by creating a new funding source and sidestepping counties’ budget approval.

Visit my website:   Denver Criminal Attorney

In 2008, David Bueno was tried for the 2004 murder of another prisoner in the Limon Correctional Facility and convicted of murder.  Although Bueno was already serving a life sentence, Carol Chambers sought the death penalty.  The case involved the stabbing death of Jeffrey Heird, a white supremacist who had been labeled as a rat for refusing to warn fellow white inmates about a drug bust in prison.   The defenses theory was that the victim was a renegade white supremacist who was killed by other white gang members who then blamed the mruder on three Hispanic inmates, including Bueno.

It  has now come to light that the 18th Judicial District prosecutors withheld  documents consistent with the defense theory.  This new information has only come to light because the judge presiding over Bueno’s co-defendant’s case, has called the D.A. to task.  For example, prosecutors failed to disclose in the Bueno case that:

 [M]inutes after finding Heird’s body, a prison nurse found a letter written by the Aryan Nation threatening to “exterminate” white inmates who “refuse to accept their proud race”  . . . [and]  two days after Heird’s death, another white inmate was found in the same living unit with blunt chest trauma. David Hollenbeck died three days later. He was named in the Aryan Nation letter as a specific target.

This is just the tip of the iceberg as defense attorneys begin to pour over the newly disclosed evidence.  As noted by the Denver Post:

Chambers’ office had turned over 31,006 pages of evidence when Bueno’s capital murder trial began in 2008. As of this week, 65,429 pages have been disclosed. That means more evidence has come forward in the 17 months since Bueno’s conviction than before he was tried — and only, in large part, because the judge presiding over [the co-defendant's] case ordered it.