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Our mission is to reverse the trend of mass incarceration in Colorado. We are a coalition of nearly 7,000 individual members and over 100 faith and community organizations who have united to stop perpetual prison expansion in Colorado through policy and sentence reform.

Our chief areas of interest include drug policy reform, women in prison, racial injustice, the impact of incarceration on children and families, the problems associated with re-entry and stopping the practice of using private prisons in our state.

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Wednesday, September 30, 2009

DA Puts Her Thumb On Scales Of Justice

The Denver Post

Carol Chambers gives capital punishment a bad name.

If you were comfortable with the death penalty, you might rethink your position now that Chambers' district attorney office has withheld bombshell defense evidence in a capital case.

Papers filed Thursday in Lincoln County District Court accuse her staff of hiding key facts — including a threatening letter and the killing of another inmate. Both were crucial to David Bueno's ability to defend himself against charges he murdered a fellow inmate at the Limon Correctional Facility.

"Words cannot express the enormity of this discovery violation and the detrimental impact it had on Mr. Bueno's defense," public defenders railed. "The nondisclosure of this type of information, contained within their own file, in a death penalty case, violates fundamental fairness and is shocking to the universal sense of justice."

Chambers, the elected DA in the 18th Judicial District, didn't return calls seeking comment.

She has been criticized for pursuing the death penalty only slightly less casually than ordering a tuna sandwich.

Eyebrows were raised in 2006 when she sought execution for Bueno, then a convicted burglar and robber, for the 2004 stabbing death of Jeffrey Heird, a white supremacist labeled as a rat for not warning fellow white inmates about a drug bust in prison.

A jury took nearly four days to find Bueno guilty of first- degree murder, and about two hours to sentence



him to life in prison rather than death by lethal injection, as Chambers had sought.

Bueno's defense centered on the theory that white supremacists at the prison killed Heird and blamed his death on three Hispanic inmates, including Bueno and his co-defendant, Alejandro Perez.


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

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I urgently suggest that all people in the 18th judicial district vote Chambers the hell OUT.

Without a doubt, her devious character affects ALL people of that area. You, your family and friends could be victimized in the future by this creature of narcissism. I wonder how many have been prosecuted already?

There are MANY DA's exactly like her. She happened to get caught. Just as John Newsome of El Paso County got caught drinking and driving a county vehicle. I don't need to 'guess' that he applied dishonorable tactics to convict in the 4th judicial courtrooms.

VOTE HER OUT IN 2010 ! ! !

Anonymous said...

How many times has Chambers done this that she has been caught. She is out to furthur her career and she don't care who she has to murder (isn't that what this is?) to get there. Sadly, the staff under her has taken up her ways also. SAD and we are so stupid we let her have a second term. It is time to get her out of there NOW