The Denver Coroner has ruled that the July 9 death of an inmate at the new jail was the result of homicide.

Marvin Booker was being processed on a charge of possession of drug paraphernalia when he got into a scuffle with jail deputies. He was shocked with a Taser device and held to the floor.

Other inmates said Booker, 56, was then carried to the holding cell and dropped face first. He never recovered.

The coroner said deputies had their body weight on Booker’s back continuously for four minutes while he was face down and put him in a “sleeper hold” for more than two minutes while shocking him with a Taser for 8 seconds.

http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_15841712

http://www.guevaracoloradolaw.com/Criminal-Law/Rights-of-the-Accused.shtml

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

As a result of these claims, an internal police investigation has been launched. Moreover, Denver District Attorneys have taken the step of reducing the level of assault charges against the assailants from felony level assault to that of a misdemeanor assault.

Andes had originally claimed that he was attacked by a group of about eight black males in a racially motivated attack ocurring in downtown Denver.

For more on this story, click here to go to the Denver Post article.

If you have been accused of an assault, call Denver Criminal Defense Attorney Andres R. Guevara at (720) 379-8262 or visit the website at www.guevaracoloradolaw.com.

 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

medical- marijuana dispensaries in the city were robbed or burglarized at a lower rate last year than either banks or liquor stores.

Read more: http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_14275637#ixzz0dsRBUh2R

The Colorado Court of Appeals upheld the criminal conviction for marijuana cultivation of Stacy Clendenin, ruling that a person designated as a medical marijuana “caregiver” must do more than just supply marijuana to patients.  In a strange decision, the Court of Appeals argued that the caregiver cannot simply grow the marijuana even if he or she knows that the marijuana is going to be used for a patient–the caregiver must actually know the identities of the patients. 

In a special concurring opinion, Judge Alan Loeb wrote that Colorado’s consitutional amendment legalizing medical marijuana “cries out for legislative action.”  Hopefully this action will include a common sense approach to marijuana. 

Source:  http://www.denverpost.com/ci_13668544

 www.guevaracoloradolaw.com

Besides, in this bad economy, maybe there are other reasons for an increase in burglaries such as . . . the bad economy.  Keep in mind that police and law enforcement agencies aren’t big fans of marijuana dispensaries so we need to be highly skeptical of “data” coming from these entities concerning marijuana use. 

Source:  http://www.kdvr.com/news/kdvr-crime-marijuana-101309,0,3838875.story

Source:  http://www.denverpost.com/crime/ci_13506928

The Attorney General’s Office applied for the federal grant. In its proposal, the AG’s office said that its goal is to test biological evidence in roughly one percent of the cases where DNA evidence could exonerate innocent inmates; request further judicial review in any case where post-conviction DNA analysis proves a conviction is questionable, document cases that result in exoneration and close any cases where post-conviction DNA analysis indicates the conviction was accurate.

Source:  http://www.denverpost.com/crime/ci_13461605

For a free consultation, contact The Law Office of Andres R. Guevara at www.guevaracoloradolaw.com or 720-379-8262.

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.