Officials To Discuss Prison Population

Grand Junction Sentinel
State and local officials will gather Thursday in Grand Junction to discuss the question of how many people the state can afford to incarcerate.
The panel discussion sponsored by Western Slope promotional group Club 20 and Colorado think tank Independence Institute will take up “Prison spending, sentencing and the Colorado budget: How many more prison beds can we afford?”
Panelists will include Mesa County District Attorney Pete Hautzinger; Mesa County Sheriff Stan Hilkey; Ari Zevaras, director of the state Department of Corrections; Public Safety Director Pete Weir; state Sen. Morgan Carroll, D-Aurora; and Steve Reynolds, chairman of the 9th Judicial District Community Corrections Board.
The discussion will take place as the state is releasing some felons early from the Department of Corrections in a cost-saving measure.
Interested people are asked to RSVP to Angeline Roles at Club 20 by calling 242-3264 or e-mailing aroles@club20.org.
The panel will be from 4 to 6:30 p.m. at Two Rivers Convention Center, and refreshments will be served.

Buck Revisits Brodericks Testimony In Masters Case

The Denver Post
Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck has decided to reopen a criminal investigation into whether Fort Collins police Detective Jim Broderick lied about his role in the 1989 surveillance of Tim Masters.

Citing new "information" emerging in proceedings tied to Masters' civil-rights lawsuit against Broderick and the prosecutors behind Masters' murder conviction, Buck filed a motion in Larimer County District Court on Tuesday asking the chief judge to reappoint him as special prosecutor to investigate possible perjury.

Last year, Buck cleared Broderick of allegations that he lied when testifying in Masters' 1998 trial that he had no involvement in investigating Masters between mid-1987 and 1992 for Peggy Hettrick's murder.
But in recent months, Broderick has disclosed e-mails and notes to Masters' civil attorney, David Lane, showing he planned a 1989 stakeout operation of Masters, then 17 years old, coordinating radio communications and observation spots around his south Fort Collins home, among other details.
In his court filing, Buck said he didn't have access to that documentation during his initial inquiry, prompting his decision to re-examine whether a crime was committed.

"The interests of justice would best be served by the appointment of a special prosecutor to conduct this additional investigation," the motion states.

Some Think Cartels Are Supplying Dispensaries

 The Denver Post
Demand for medical marijuana in Colorado has grown so fast in the past few months that it has outstripped the production of legal "grow" operations and is now probably being supplied by international drug cartels, say some local sheriffs and agents from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
And as dispensaries proliferate throughout the state, police and lawyers say they are worried about the peripheral crime rising around the shops intended to function as pharmacies, selling medical marijuana prescribed to people who suffer one of eight conditions, ranging from chronic pain to glaucoma.
"Dispensaries are popping up like mushrooms," said DEA special agent-in-charge Jeffrey Sweetin. "Now we have thousands of 20- to 25-year-olds carrying cards. And the cartels are getting rich off this law."
Last summer, the Colorado Board of Health declined to limit the number of patients that medical marijuana dispensaries could service.
The result, health department spokesman Mark Salley said, was a boom in the number of people who received cards allowing them to purchase medical pot. There are now 13,000 people in possession of such cards.
Colorado, which approved medical marijuana in 2000, is one of 14 states that permit it.
The number of Colorado dispensaries is not tracked by the state health department or any other agency.
Legal grow operations linked to dispensaries are limited to six cannabis plants each.
By contrast, most of the street pot comes from big, outdoor grows, such as the three operations — within a 5-mile radius of Chatfield Reservoir — busted by DEA officials last summer. Sweetin said one grow had 14,000 plants that averaged 5 to 6 feet tall.

Lockdown Follows Assaults At Territorial

The Denver Post

By KAREN VIGIL
THE PUEBLO CHIEFTAIN

A lockdown was continuing Monday night at Colorado Territorial Correctional Facility following a morning assault at the medium-security prison just west of Canon City.

The incident occurred during breakfast, said Katherine Sanguinetti, Colorado Department of Corrections director of public affairs.

"Two offenders assaulted two staff and a third staff was assaulted coming to the aid of the other two," said Sanguinetti. She did not release the genders or other identification of employees involved, citing DOC policy.

Sanguinetti said one DOC employee sought medical attention earlier in the day, but was not sure if the injuries resulted in hospitalization. No hospitalizations or fatalities were reported immediately following the incident.

Asked what led to the assaults, Sanguinetti said only that the incident remains under investigation. No weapons, however, were involved, she said. The lockdown will continue at least through today.

CTCF houses 566 medium security inmates as well as 120 in transition to other prison facilities, according to the state prison Web site. It also hosts an infirmary, a hospice and a variety of DOC business offices.

Suthers: Colorado Needs To Regulate Medical Marijuana

The Denver Post
Colorado Attorney General John Suthers says that if an Obama administration plan not to arrest medical-marijuana users and suppliers is going to work, state lawmakers need to regulate the industry.
But drawing up rules for how medical marijuana is grown and distributed likely will not be a top priority when the legislature reconvenes in January.
"The people of Colorado have clearly spoken on this issue and have decided that medicinal uses of marijuana are appropriate and legal in Colorado," said House Speaker Terrance Carroll, D-Denver. "When the legislature reconvenes in January, I will be asking the House to keep our focus on bolstering the economy, creating jobs and balancing the budget."
Over the weekend, the U.S. Department of Justice issued an advisory to prosecutors not to pursue cases against medical-marijuana users and suppliers who follow state laws.
"The U.S. attorney general's new medical-marijuana policy relies on the faulty assumption that Colorado has clearly defined laws on medical marijuana. In fact, it does not," Suthers said in his statement.
Colorado is one of 14 states that allow the use of marijuana for medical purposes.
Currently there is no state regulation on dispensaries, Mark Salley spokesman for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment said.
Instead, Colorado's towns and cities must decide the rules for how and where dispensaries and growing operations function within their boundaries.
Since June 2001, about 13,000 people have applied for medical-marijuana cards, according to the health department. But the number of dispensaries in the state is not known.
Robert Corry, an attorney who specializes in medical-marijuana cases, said regulation would cripple a new industry that provides people with medicine. "Really, I think that it is a solution in search of a problem."
Suthers said there has been an increase in the number of dispensaries and patients since federal regulations eased earlier this year.
This increase is more likely a result of more doctors becoming comfortable prescribing the drug and more patients exploring its benefits, Corry said.
Larry Hill, owner of the Apothecary dispensary in Longmont, said eliminating the gray areas around dispensaries is important, but he also said state regulation is not a good solution.
He said developing general standards for growers and dispensaries would benefit the state more than monitoring patients and number of places medical marijuana is sold.
It is more important to monitor the quality of the cannabis and care of the patients, he said.
"Our top priority is providing a safe place for our patients to buy their medicine," Hill said.

Scott "Fear Factor" Mcinnis Is Very Concerned About YOUR Safety

Westword
3

Scott "Fear Factor" McInnis is very, very concerned about your safety

By Alan Prendergast in Colorado Crimes, Follow That Story, Politics

Mon., Oct. 19 2009 @ 3:59PM

Governor Bill Ritter's modest proposal to parole hundreds of inmates a few weeks or months before their mandatory release date, thereby cutting millions from the state budget, has become the political whipping boy for his most opportunistic critics, from GOP legislators to Weld County District Attorney (and Senate candidate) Ken Buck to the hand-wringing editorial board over at the Denver Post.

But nobody has stomped on the issue with more enthusiasm than gubernatorial opponent Scott McInnis. In the latest in a series of blasts denouncing the early release plan, Sheriff Scotty accuses the guv of fostering "a clear threat to public safety."

Bar the door and pass the ammo, son. The streets just ain't safe no more.

It's true that Ritter's plan is flawed. He assured folks he wouldn't be letting killers and sex offenders out early, and the Post's Kirk Mitchell has reported that several names on the early release list would suggest otherwise. But in the politically motivated hysteria surrounding the plan, it's easy to lose sight of the fact that these are people who are getting out of the system anyway. In some cases, they're only coming out a few days or a couple of weeks earlier, and it's hard to make a crime wave out of that.

In fact, Ritter's plan hardly qualifies as "early" release. The state used to routinely reward prisoners who demonstrated good behavior with discretionary parole, but only a small percentage of inmates get that any more. The vast majority serve out their sentences right up to their mandatory release date, then have a mandatory period of parole to complete on top of that. A good hunk of them end up back inside for parole failures, a dismal statistic explored at length in my 2006 feature "Over and Over Again."

Ritter's plan targets offenders who are within six months of mandatory release. Shaving a few weeks off their sentences is unlikely to have a dramatic impact on the crime rate -- unless you release thousands at once. That's not happening. The Colorado Parole Board routinely turns down violent offenders for early release. McInnis claims that "the Governor is overriding the Parole Board," but he presents no evidence that's happening. Actually, the plan is being criticized in part because the board is denying so many early releases it's doubtful that much in the way of savings will be realized.

So what we're left with is a lot of fear-mongering about a timid plan. And the more promising part of the budget-cutting, the part that involves letting parolees who are doing well complete their parole early, gets no mention at all. That's a shame, because there's a case to be made for cost savings by shortening the lengthy mandatory parole period for those who have demonstrated that they can function well in the community. Among other benefits, reducing the length of the parole period reduces the chance that someone who is otherwise doing well will commit a technical violation, such as missing a curfew, that could land them back in prison.

One of the recent beneficiaries of the parole termination plan is Casey Holden, the subject of my blog series "I Shall Be Released." After a decade spent mostly behind bars, including four years in lockdown, Holden got out of prison in early 2007 with few prospects. But he refused to become a statistic. He found a crummy job, then a better one. He paid restitution, stayed clean, fulfilled the other conditions of his parole, started a family. As a reward, his parole has ended three months earlier than scheduled.
That's good for him -- and good for the taxpayer. Now his former parole officer can devote more attention to those hardcore felons who are getting out on parole a few days earlier than they would otherwise.

US To Stop Arresting Medical Pot Users

The Denver Post
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration will not seek to arrest medical marijuana users and suppliers as long as they conform to state laws, under policy guidelines to be sent to federal prosecutors today.
Two Justice Department officials described the policy, saying prosecutors will be told that it is not a good use of their time to arrest people who use or provide medical marijuana in strict compliance with state laws. The policy is a significant departure from the Bush administration, which insisted it would continue to enforce federal anti-pot laws regardless of state codes.
Fourteen states, including Colorado, allow some use of marijuana for medical purposes. A memo spelling out the policy is expected to be sent today to federal prosecutors in those states and also to top officials at the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration. The Associated Press

Rehap Programs Cut Prisons Do less To Keep Prisoners From Returning

Gina Tatum spends her days in a compound surrounded by electrified fence in the sun-baked heart of the Central Valley, hoping to change her life.

She will soon turn 50, and after two decades in and out of prison, she says she is tired of victimizing others, tired of stealing, tired of doing drugs.

"I can't afford any more years up here -- I've lost too many," said Tatum, who is serving a four-year stint for forgery at the Valley State Prison for Women in Chowchilla. "I'm trying to learn things to change my thinking, change everything about me, so I can go home. It's so easy to get caught up here and never leave. I don't want to die in prison."

But because of cuts in the state budget, Tatum and thousands of other inmates and parolees in California are about to lose access to many of the programs the prison system has offered to help them turn their lives around.

Officials plan to chop $250 million a year from rehabilitation services, more than 40% of what the state now devotes to them and a quarter of the $1 billion it is slicing from its prison system.

The cuts occur four years after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger persuaded lawmakers to change the name of the Youth and Adult Correctional Agency to the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

"We don't want to just put the name on it," he said in 2007, proposing to expand rehabilitation services for prisoners. "We have to heal them. We have to get them ready to go out so they can get a job, connect with society and never commit a crime again."

Fellow Inmates Ease Pain of Dying In Jail

NY Times
OXSACKIE, N.Y. — Allen Jacobs lived hard for his 50 years, and when his liver finally shut down he faced the kind of death he did not want. On a recent afternoon Mr. Jacobs lay in a hospital bed staring blankly at the ceiling, his eyes sunk in his skull, his skin lusterless. A volunteer hospice worker, Wensley Roberts, ran a wet sponge over Mr. Jacobs’s dry lips, encouraging him to drink.

Months to Live

Compassion Behind Bars

This is the fourth article in a series on the promises and challenges of extending, or ending, the lives of very ill patients.

Mr. Jones said he liked having other inmates like John Henson sit with him because “I can talk with them better than staff members.”

“Come on, Mr. Jacobs,” he said.

Mr. Roberts is one of a dozen inmates at the Coxsackie Correctional Facility who volunteer to sit with fellow prisoners in the last six months of their lives. More than 3,000 prisoners a year die of natural causes in correctional facilities.

Mr. Roberts recalled a day when Mr. Jacobs, then more coherent, had started crying. Mr. Roberts held his patient and tried to console him. Then their experience took a turn unique to their setting, the medical ward of a maximum security prison. Mr. Roberts said he told Mr. Jacobs to “man up.”

Mr. Jacobs, serving two to four years for passing forged checks, cursed at him, telling him, “‘I don’t want to die in jail. Do you want to die in jail?’ ”
“I said no,” said Mr. Roberts, who is serving eight years for robbery. “He said, ‘Then stop telling me to man up,’ and he started crying. And then he said that I’m his family.”

American prisons are home to a growing geriatric population, with one-third of all inmates expected to be over 50 by next year. As courts have handed down longer sentences and tightened parole, about 75 prisons have started hospice programs, half of them using inmate volunteers, according to the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization. Susan Atkins, a follower of Charles Manson, died last month in hospice at the Central California Women’s Facility at Chowchilla after being denied compassionate release.

Study Finds High Rate Of Imprisonment Among Dropouts

The New York Times
On any given day, about one in every 10 young male high school dropouts is in jail or juvenile detention, compared with one in 35 young male high school graduates, according to a new study of the effects of dropping out of school in an America where demand for low-skill workers is plunging.

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The picture is even bleaker for African-Americans, with nearly one in four young black male dropouts incarcerated or otherwise institutionalized on an average day, the study said. That compares with about one in 14 young, male, white, Asian or Hispanic dropouts.
Researchers at Northeastern University used census and other government data to carry out the study, which tracks the employment, workplace, parenting and criminal justice experiences of young high school dropouts.
“We’re trying to show what it means to be a dropout in the 21st century United States,” said Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern, who headed a team of researchers that prepared the report. “It’s one of the country’s costliest problems. The unemployment, the incarceration rates — it’s scary.”
A coalition of civil rights and public education advocacy groups and a network of alternative schools in Chicago commissioned the report as part of a push for new educational opportunities for the nation’s 6.2 million high school dropouts.
“The dropout rate is driving the nation’s increasing prison population, and it’s a drag on America’s economic competitiveness,” said Marc H. Morial, the former New Orleans mayor who is president of the National Urban League, one of the groups in the coalition that commissioned the report. “This report makes it clear that every American pays a cost when a young person leaves school without a diploma.”

States Releasing More Inmates

AP Report
PAWTUCKET, R.I. — If the state weren't so pressed for cash, Joshua Gomes might still be behind bars. Instead, he's working temp jobs — at a construction site one week, a recycling plant another — and talks about going to college, teaching or joining the military.

The former cocaine addict and dealer had to prepare for his future sooner than expected: He was released from prison in June after serving a little more than half his two-year sentence, benefiting from a state law that allows certain prisoners to get out early if they commit to rehabilitation programs behind bars.
States under pressure to erase budget deficits and ease prison overcrowding are allowing inmates to shave greater amounts of time off their sentences through good behavior and participation in classes such as job training and substance abuse treatment.

Some victims' advocates and law enforcement professionals worry convicts released early will continue committing crimes, and they question whether rehabilitative programs offered behind bars can produce lasting improvements. But supporters say the law changes not only cut costs but also can motivate inmates — the overwhelming majority of whom eventually will be released — to acquire life skills to keep them from committing new crimes.

"I would rather have an inmate released three weeks earlier, knowing that he had dealt with his substance abuse addictions, than waiting the three weeks and releasing him untreated," Rhode Island corrections director A.T. Wall said.

Among new laws passed this year: Colorado now permits low-risk inmates 12 days per month of earned time instead of 10; Mississippi lifted a 180-day cap on earned time; and Oregon raised the amount of time inmates can deduct from their sentences for good behavior from 20 percent to 30 percent.

Cancer Stricken Inmate Wants To Go Home To Die

The Denver Post
David O. Adams wants to go home to die.
Stricken with terminal brain cancer, Adams has only a few weeks to live.
"I want to die in the companionship of people who care for me," Adams said. "I don't want to die in that cell up there in the infirmary."
Adams, 47, who shot and wounded a man in 1998, is serving 24 years in prison. He asked to be paroled at a hearing last month at the Denver Reception and Diagnostic Center.
The Colorado Parole Board denied his release.
Parole Board chairman David Michaud said he can't legally disclose why Adams was not granted parole, just that he did not meet all the criteria.
"The decision was not made for lack of compassion," he said.
Adams also is not eligible for "special-needs parole," offered to terminally ill and elderly offenders, because he committed a violent crime.

Michaud said he moved Adams' parole hearing up from April 2010 at the request of Adams' uncle.
Parole is denied for a variety of reasons, including victim input, the inmate's behavior in prison and their commitment to sobriety, Michaud said.

Hearing officers also try to determine if the prisoner has completed anger-management and drug-rehab programs, prior criminal history and if there is adequate family support upon release, Michaud said.
Recently, the issue of compassionate release for violent offenders has raised questions about what is an appropriate balance between public safety and mercy.

In California, Charles Manson family member Susan Atkins — who stabbed pregnant actress Sharon Tate to death in August 1969 — was denied parole and compassionate release as she lay on a prison hospital gurney. She died Sept. 24, 22 days after her parole hearing.

Prison Cuts Possible Elsewhere

The Denver Post

Chambers Non-Disclosure Inexcusable

The Denver Post
"All hell is going to break loose."
That's a judge's take on District Attorney Carol Chambers' office withholding bombshell evidence in a death-penalty case.
It's not often you hear a judge haul off like 15th District Chief Judge Stanley Brinkley did about the Chambers team's concealing key facts while prosecuting David Bueno for the murder of a fellow inmate at the Limon Correctional Facility.
Bueno's defense centered on the theory that white supremacists at the prison killed Jeffrey Heird and blamed the murder on three Latino inmates, including Bueno and co-defendant Alejandro Perez.
Heird was labeled a rat for not warning fellow white inmates about a prison drug bust.
As I wrote a few weeks ago, prosecutors withheld the fact that minutes after finding Heird's body in 2004, a prison nurse discovered a letter written by the Aryan Nation threatening to "exterminate" white inmates who "refuse to accept their proud race." DAs also failed to disclose that two days after Heird's death, another white inmate was found in the same living unit with blunt chest trauma. David Hollenbeck was named as a target in the Aryan Nation letter. He died three days later.
"We have been messing around with this case, playing hide-and-go- seek," Brinkley chastised, court documents show. "It's a travesty."
I don't know David Bueno, 45, whom a jury convicted and sentenced to life in prison rather than death. His guilt or innocence isn't the point.
The point is that DAs sat on more than half of the evidence in his case, including the two pages that would have been most helpful for his defense.
And that Chambers' office took 17 months after Bueno's conviction to hand over the documents — only after Brinkley ordered it to do so as he presides over Perez's case.

First Ten Felons Set Free Under Early Release

The Denver Post
A man accused three times of sex offenses, a drunken driver convicted of vehicular homicide and a third man nabbed 46 times for alleged crimes including assault are all among the first 10 Colorado inmates granted early prison releases.
And they were considered the best of the bunch.
The 10 whose sentences were cut by weeks or months by the Colorado Parole Board were among a smaller-than-expected number the board considered safe to let go. And the volume and diversity of the 10 inmates' prior offenses shows how difficult it will continue to be for the state to choose among thousands of convicted criminals for early release.
The early-release initiative, announced Aug. 18, is part of a plan to save $19 million toward

Extras

• View images of the first 10 inmates released early from prison because of the Colorado budget gap.

filling a $318 million gap in this year's state budget. State officials have projected that over the two years, 8,003 inmates will be eligible. Gov. Bill Ritter has said that killers, kidnappers and sex offenders would not get out early.
Corrections officials initially estimated that the parole board would deny 20 percent of the early-release cases, leaving about 6,400 who could be released up to six months early.
Ritter administration officials referred questions about the releases to Parole Board chairman David Michaud , who said the process of finding offenders deserving of early release has proven much more difficult than anticipated.
80 percent deemed too risky
He said the board is rejecting about 80 percent of eligible offenders for early release, including 149 sex offenders whose cases were brought before the board.
This means the state won't realize the anticipated savings.
"I've been a cop since 1963 and I've spoken to hundreds of victims. I'm not going to let someone out early if I don't think it's safe," said Michaud, who was Denver's police chief for six years. "I don't care how much money they save or don't save."
He said Ritter has told him there is no quota and he wouldn't object to the parole board not releasing any offenders if they aren't deemed safe.
If the Parole Board continues to reject the bulk of inmates for early release, the savings will be just a fraction of the $19 million projected.
The Parole Board bases release decisions on two risk-assessment scales. The board reviews victim input, institutional behavior, commitment to sobriety, participation in programming, family support, job opportunities and prior criminal records, Michaud said.
In response to an open-records request, the state released the names of the first 10 this week.
Jose Madrigal, 27, convicted of vehicular homicide in 1999, was released the first day that early releases were granted on Sept. 22. It was 26 days before his mandatory release date. Madrigal had trouble following rules in prison.
In 2007, he was convicted of rioting in prison and got another two years tacked on to his sentence.
Michaud said that Madrigal drove drunk, rolled a van and killed a passenger, but he didn't intentionally kill someone. The board will not give early releases to inmates guilty of first- or second-degree murder, he said.
Although Benny Joe Rael, 51, was serving a nonviolent theft conviction when he was released 16 days early — also on Sept. 22 — he had been arrested previously three times for sex offenses and was convicted in one child sex-assault case in 1982, Colorado Bureau of Investigation records say. 

CCA Pays 1.3 Million In Crowley Sex Harassment Suit

A private prison operator will pay $1.3 million to settle complaints from 21 female employees who claimed they suffered harassment from male supervisors and colleagues ranging from sexually explicit comments to rape.

A female officer complained a male co-worker sexually harassed her and that after she complained, she was reassigned to an isolated location of the medium-security Crowley County Correctional Facility where she was raped by the man she complained about, according to the federal lawsuit.

The suit, filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, also accused a chief of security at the prison of forcing a female correctional officer to have sex with him so she could keep her job.
Female employees also accused their male counterparts of openly viewing pornography and making demeaning sexual jokes about them.

The EEOC sued Corrections Corporation of America and Dominion Correctional Services on behalf of the female employees in 2006. Although a settlement was reached, the defendants did not admit liability. Dominion is no longer operating prisons and the company could not be reached for comment.
"CCA settled the claim to avoid the time, expense, and uncertainties of continued litigation and trial," said a statement issued by that company.

CCA assumed control of the prison in January 2003 from Dominion and claims that a "substantial number" of the more serious allegations occurred under Dominion's operation. "Of the 21 individuals alleging discriminatory conduct, eight were never CCA employees, but were employed solely by Dominion," the statement said. "Moreover, although seven of the 21 individuals were employed by both CCA and Dominion, the majority of their claims also related to events that allegedly occurred before CCA began operating the facility."

EEOC attorney Rita Byrnes Kittle said some of the employees accused of sexual harassment over the years have resigned, but some are still working at the prison.  Guadalupe Gonzales, the 39-year-old former employee accused of rape in 2002, was convicted in 2005 of felony sexual assault. He was sentenced to four years of probation and is registered as a sex offender.

As part of the settlement agreement, Dominion cannot operate a prison in Colorado for three years. CCA must have sexual harassment training conducted by an outside expert for the next three years and have a toll-free number available for employees to call to report sexual harassment.

Colorado Lawmaker Wants To Sell Prison

CBS 4
STEVEN K. PAULSON, Associated Press Writer
DENVER (AP) ― State Rep. Glenn Vaad said he was stunned when he learned that the Colorado Department of Corrections planned to leave a new, $208 million maximum-security prison empty because of the state's budget crisis.

"That's unconscionable in my mind. We invested $208 million of the taxpayers' money and because of the economic downturn, we can't afford to open it," he said. "Let's sell it."

Vaad, R-Mead, said the state would have to change state law to allow a private prison to buy or lease the prison because state law bars private companies from housing maximum security prisoners. If lawmakers reject that option, Vaad said it should be sold off and run privately as a medium security prison allowed under current law.

Although the state is currently in a budget crisis and opening the prison has been put on hold, Sen. Moe Keller, who heads the Legislature's Joint Budget Committee, state attorney general John Suthers and corrections director Ari Zavaras have all come out against Vaad's plan, saying it's too dangerous.

"I would not approve of allowing the private sector to operate maximum security prisons in the state of Colorado," said Suthers, a Republican. "If you look around the country, placing maximum security detention into private hands has not gone well."

Keller, a Democrat from Wheat Ridge, said the state has already had serious problems with medium security private prisons and allowing the private operation of a maximum security prison is out of the question.

"I'm vehemently opposed to selling a maximum security prison to a private company," Keller said.

However, Keller said she might be open to selling the building to a private company if some other use can be found.

Kelly McParland: Benign White House Unleashes Marijuana Boom

The National Post
Anyone with an interest in the debate over medical marijuana might want to keep an eye on California and Colorado, where prospects for the pot business have never been brighter. It’s not far-fetched to suggest a combination of financial need and the Obama administration’s benign neglect  could make California the first state to legalize recreational use of marijuana next year.

Without making a big deal of it, the White House has made life a lot easier for pot enthusiasts. Although 13 states have approved the use of marijuana for medical purposes, it remains a crime under federal law, which means you may be free under state law to open a dispensary and start offering various types of pot, but can’t be sure a federal narcotics team won’t bust in and drag you off to jail anyway. If that happens, the U.S. Federal Court won’t let you use the state law in your defence.

The Bush administration, being staunchly anti-drug, raided regularly and often. But Barack Obama, during his campaign for the presidency, promised to lay off on the heavy-handed approach, and soon after taking office made good on his word. Attorney General Eric Holder said in February Washington would suspend the raids, and concentrate instead on dealers who violate both federal and state law.

Ex Prison Director In Exile After Court

Colorado Springs Gazette
A former state prisons official who retired under a cloud in 2006 pleaded guilty in Fremont County this week to harassing his estranged wife and persuading a state employee to run a restricted background check on her boyfriend.

Nolin Lee Renfrow — who began his 27-year career as a prison guard and rose to become director of prisons for the state Department of Corrections — is now banned from entering a 12-county swath of central Colorado.

The unusual restriction was part of plea agreement reached Monday in a Cañon City courtroom that allowed Renfrow to avoid a prison sentence.

The case involved a complaint from Renfrow’s then-wife, who told police that Renfrow repeatedly violated a restraining order she filed Aug. 11, 2008, after an earlier incident in which he allegedly he kicked down her front door during a quarrel over their ongoing divorce.

Prosecutors alleged that Renfrow or an accomplice sneaked into her yard — from which Renfrow had been banned — and took down the license plate of her boyfriend’s pickup parked next to her house.

On Jan. 21, Renfrow persuaded a prison security worker to run the plate through a state investigative database maintained by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation and restricted to law enforcement agencies.

At the time, the retired prisons boss was working with Jacobs Engineering Group Inc., which won a state contract to help build a prison complex in Cañon City. Renfrow told the security officer that the license plate was from a vehicle that had been abandoned at the construction site.

He ended up calling the boyfriend’s employers and telling them about the man’s relationship with his estranged wife.

Renfrow pleaded guilty to three counts of violating a protection order and one count of false reporting, all misdemeanors.  Prosecutors agreed to dismiss a felony count of stalking and five felony counts of intimidating a victim.

Going To Zen To Deal With Life Behind Bars

CNN
RIVERDALE, Georgia (CNN) -- In his darkest moment, Kenneth Brown lost it all. His wife and kids, the housebroken dog, the vacation home on Cape Cod all vanished when he was sent to prison for an arson in 1996.
Trapped in his gloomy cell and serving a 20-year sentence that felt like an eternity, Brown, then 49, found himself stretched out on the floor. He was silent. His eyes were shut. His body did not move.
Brown, a man raised as a Baptist and taught to praise the Lord and fear the devil, was meditating.
"I try to focus on the space between two thoughts, because it prevents me from getting lost," said Brown, who discovered meditation, yoga and Buddhist teachings three months into his sentence.
"This helped me stay on track and get me through prison," he said.
Eastern religions encompassing meditation techniques have captivated hippies, 20-somethings and celebrities like actor Richard Gere. But since the 1960s, the art of meditation also has found a growing number of unlikely followers behind prison bars.
The inmates say meditation -- an ancient practice that develops mental awareness and fosters relaxation -- is teaching them how to cope in prison.
"Mostly, the people in Buddhist community are going into the prisons, providing programs, and word of mouth gets from one inmate to another," explained Gary Friedman, communications chairman for the American Correctional Chaplains Association. "It's a break from all the hustle and noise of the prison environment."
There is no group tracking the number of inmates converting to Buddhism or engaging in meditation practices. But programs and workshops educating inmates about meditation and yoga are sprouting up across the country.
Meditation can help the convicts find calmness in a prison culture ripe with violence and chaos. The practice provides them a chance to reflect on their crimes, wrestle through feelings of guilt and transform themselves during their rehabilitative journey, Buddhist experts say.
In the past five years, books like the "Prison Chaplaincy Guidelines for Zen Buddhism" and "Razor-Wire Dharma: A Buddhist Life in Prison" have emerged.
"This is transformative justice, as opposed to punitive," said Fleet Maull, founder of the Prison Dharma Network, one of the largest support networks helping inmates learn meditation and Buddhist teachings.
Since its inception in 1989, Prison Dharma Network has grown from one person -- Maull -- teaching Buddhist principles to more than 75 member organizations corresponding with 2,500 individuals, many of them inmates.
For the past seven years, Maull's group has taught a weekly meditation class in Boulder County Jail in Colorado.
Some inmates follow Zen Buddhism, a practice that originated in China, and meet weekly to focus their minds. Others practice Vipassana, a Buddhist practice founded in India, which consists of completing hundreds of hours of meditation in a short period of time.
Buddhism has gained momentum in the United States over the past 25 years, becoming the third most popular religion in America behind Christianity and Judaism, according to the 2008 report from the the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. About 1.7 million Americans call themselves Buddhists, and many of them are converts, the study said. According to the American Religious Identification Survey in 2008, there were 1.2 million self-identified Buddhists.
Some inmates, like Brown, may not label themselves official Buddhists, but they meditate, practice yoga and followBuddhist principles on truth, responsibility and suffering.

Residents Show Up To Save La Alma

This isn't just where I work....it's mostly where I live.  
The Denver Post
More than 100 passionate west-siders begged Denver city officials tonight not to mess with a recreation center that's considered the heart of the community.

Young and old, some angry and some fighting back tears, showed up for a meeting to discuss ways to try to preserve the La Alma Recreation Center just southwest of downtown at 1325 W. 11th Ave.
Faced with a $120 million deficit, the city is considering privatizing part of La Alma, while having the parks department oversee and improve the pool.

"Privatizing La Alma is like blowing out a candle," said neighborhood resident Chris Medina . "It is more than a neighborhood rec center. It is my home."

He and others fear that letting a nonprofit operate La Alma would change its character and could be the first step in its closure.

Craig Peña, a Santa Fe Drive businessman, talked about the role of La Alma in people's lives. He asked for a show of hands of how many people know "Rich from the rec center."

Nearly everyone raised their hand. Rich, it turned out, is the janitor at La Alma.
"I appreciate ... trying to balance our city budget, but I don't appreciate it being done on the backs of the west side," Peña said. "If privatizing were such a great idea it would be done all over the city. Don't start with us. Start with Wash Park."

Horses and Burros Enter New Program

Pueblo Chieftain
CANON CITY - Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar on Thursday proposed a national solution to restore the health of America’s wild horse herds and the public rangelands that support them.

The new program will not affect the program in Canon City where inmates train wild horses for adoption.

A total of 65 inmates, working at the East Canon Prison Complex for Colorado Correctional Industries, care for 3,000 of the nation's 32,000 wild horses and burros which are being held in captivity at various facilities. Many of the horses held in Canon City are trained and adopted by the public, or used in programs such as one at U.S. Border Patrol stations, which have adopted 31 mustangs during the past two years.

"The recent economic downturn has seen public demand to adopt wild horses decline sharply," said Bob Abbey, director for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. "There is a high cost to hold these horses and humanely feed them in off-range holding facilities."

Another 37,000 horses and burros continue to roam the desert rangelands of 10 Western states - mostly in Nevada and Arizona - where drought has made for a shortage of both water and forage to sustain the wild herds. "Frankly these horses are in very bad condition," Salazar said. "We have outlined a new program we believe will better protect wild horses which are a symbol of our nation and better manage the public lands they roam where out-of-control populations have grown over time, from 25,000 in 1971 to 69,000 today."

NY Drug Law Refoms Kick In: Treatment Stressed

Newsday

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — Hundreds of low-level drug offenders in New York prisons became eligible Wednesday for shortened sentences or release under recent changes in state law.
Gov. David Paterson and lawmakers agreed in April to revise the Rockefeller-era drug laws, once among the harshest in the nation and in the vanguard of a movement more than 30 years ago toward mandatory prison terms. They argued that lower-level offenders would be better served by addiction treatment rather than prison.
"Under the Rockefeller Drug Laws, we did not treat the people who were addicted. We locked them up," Paterson said Wednesday at the Brooklyn Court House. "Families were broken, money was wasted, and we continued to wrestle with a statewide drug problem."

Colorado's War On Drugs A Fiscal Disaster

My good friend Mike Krause on Huff Post
Huffington Post
Colorado lawmakers' long-running devotion to the War on Drugs has helped push state prison spending to unsustainable levels. In the meantime, illicit drugs remain readily available throughout the state. This year, the Colorado Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice (CCJJ) has broken down into several sub-groups including a Drug Policy Task Force, to take a hard look at the state's drug laws and sentencing policies.
This is an excellent opportunity for fiscal conservatives to take the lead in bringing some much needed scrutiny and restraint to corrections spending in Colorado.

In 1992, Colorado lawmakers surrendered their prerogative to write the state's criminal law and enacted the Uniform Controlled Substances Act, written by drug war bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., and designed to bring state drug laws in to conformity with federal drug laws. The act, among many other things, created numerous new drug offenses, and sentencing enhancements for those offenses.

And the result?

Over the last several decades, the percentage of inmates whose most serious sentencing offense is a drug offense has quadrupled to around 20 percent of Colorado's prison population. Drug offenders are by far the single largest category of new admissions to Colorado prisons at around 23 percent of annual admissions.
There are more drug offenders in Colorado prisons today than the entire prison population 25 years ago when the state's inmate population was around 3,500.

Given this, you might think a drug-free Colorado is close at hand. You would be wrong.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-krause/colorados-war-on-drugs-a_b_312779.html

Department of Corrections Monthly Population - September

This report will show you that only 31 people have been released on the "accelerated release plan"
Department of Corrections

Westword Getting Potful of Apps for Weed Reviewer

The Denver Post
Calling all potheads, especially those with time on their handsand preferably ones who can, like, punctuate.
Westword is hiring a reviewer to cover Colorado's booming medical-marijuana industry.
The freelance gig happens to be one of the few journalism openings anywhere in the time zone. It's also dream work for legions of users who have made an art out of comparing dispensaries, analyzing pot strains and critiquing the newly available array of THC-laced edibles.

"Some people go antiquing I go dispensering," wrote Tam, an eager applicant.
"I can do this. I can do this. I can do this!!!" wrote another, Jeff Lucas.
Say what you will about medical marijuana. Fact is, the industry here is smokin'.

Colorado is second only to California in its number of dispensaries. About 100 stores — and lots more "caregivers" — sell dozens of strains of loose pot, plus pastries, chocolates, hard candies, pasta sauces, salad dressings and, at least in one case, tapioca pudding.

Registered users total 11,094, up from 3,302 in July 2008. The state's list has more than doubled since winter, when the Obama administration ended federal raids on state-sanctioned dispensaries.
Still, curiosity and confusion abound as users blog and Twitter comparing notes.

Police Vote To Delay Pay Raises To Avert Layoffs

The Denver Post
Denver police agreed Tuesday to delay their negotiated pay raises for 2010 and 2011, protecting officers from layoffs.

The ratification reversed the rejection a month ago by police of a similar package of contract concessions.
Mayor John Hickenlooper said the concessions were needed to help close a $160 million deficit in the city's general fund from July of this year through all of next year.

The mayor had said he would have to lay off 92 officers if they didn't delay their wage increases to bring the budget in line.

"This decision ensures the greatest number of police officers remain on the street and preserves public safety," Hickenlooper said in a statement.

"Layoffs were pending and hanging over our heads," said Lt. Vincent Gavito, president of the union that represents police. "The officers did what they had to do."

Gavito said the unofficial tally showed more than 1,200 officers voted, with about 74 percent agreeing to delay their raises.

AG Holder Speaks At Chief of Police Conference

DOJ Website Speech

Chief Whitman, thank you for hosting the IACP in your home city.
And IACP Executive Director Dan Rosenblatt, thank you for your strong leadership of this outstanding organization.

Officers and Members of the Board of Directors, friends, and colleagues. It is my great pleasure to be able to join you today for the first time as Attorney General.

Eight months ago, Vice-President Biden administered to me the Oath of Office – an oath not dissimilar to the one sworn by each of you – to defend this country from all enemies, foreign and domestic. Since that time, it has been my solemn privilege to stand with you as you work tirelessly and selflessly to animate the meaning of those words, and to do honor to the uniforms you so proudly wear.

Together we have walked the Pathways of Remembrance and silently lighted candles at the Law Enforcement Officers’ Memorial in honor of your 133 brothers and sisters who lost their lives in the line of duty last year.
Together we have grieved with the husbands and wives, daughters and sons, for whom the steady march of time will never ease the burden of the loss they suffered on September 11^th, 2001.

And together we have commemorated feats of heroism performed by your fellow law enforcement officers, who acted for no other reason than the noble realization that "duty called."

As Attorney General, I have traveled our country and watched many of you in action, and I have personally witnessed the dramatic results of your daunting tasks. I have seen your efforts manifested in children who are learning in safer schools; in teenagers who now have a park or a project or a basketball court to help them stay on course; in senior citizens who are unafraid to sit on their porch or to walk to the grocery store; and in neighborhoods that have been reclaimed from drugs, violence, and despair.

In Aftermath of Failed Execution: Two Postponements

New York Times
CINCINNATI — In continuing fallout from a failed execution last month, Gov. Ted Strickland on Monday postponed two other executions to give corrections officials more time to revise lethal injection procedures.
The announcement came just hours after a federal appeals court indefinitely delayed one of those executions, which had been scheduled for Thursday, because of similar concerns about procedures.

The state is looking into backup procedures in case the standard execution techniques fail, as they did on Sept. 15, when technicians at the state prison in Lucasville tried for over two hours to maintain an intravenous connection in order to inject Romell Broom with lethal drugs for the abduction, rape and murder of a teenage girl in 1984. A hearing to consider whether Mr. Broom can be executed in conformity with constitutional requirements is scheduled for Nov. 30.

“More research and evaluation of backup or alternative procedures is necessary before one or more can be selected,” Mr. Strickland said in his order.

Judge Permits Lawsuit Against DA's To Proceed

9 News
FORT COLLINS - A federal judge has ruled that Timothy Masters can proceed with portions of his civil rights lawsuit against the prosecutors who presented the murder case against him.

The judge, Lewis T. Babcock, opened his ruling with a quote from the American Bar Association Canons of Professional Ethics noting prosecutors have a duty to "see that justice is done," rather than to just seek convictions.

A jury convicted Masters in 1999 for the 1988 murder of Peggy Hettrick in Fort Collins. Masters was 15 when Hettrick was killed. He spent nearly 10 years in prison appealing his conviction, and was freed in 2008 by an outside judge who ruled that new DNA evidence pointed toward another suspect.

After he was freed, Masters sued the police and prosecutors who built the case against him. He argued they engaged in a decades-long conspiracy to arrest, convict and keep him locked up despite evidence pointing toward other suspects.

Babcock has already permitted Masters' suit against Fort Collins police to proceed.

In his ruling issued Monday morning, Babcock dismissed several claims against the prosecutors. But he permitted others to stand in what Masters' attorney called a "smashing" victory.

The two prosecutors who presented the original case against Masters, Terry Gilmore and Jolene Blair, are now Larimer District Court judges.

Both argued to Babcock that they cannot be sued for their official actions, based on a law granting prosecutors absolute immunity when acting as prosecutors. Babcock in his ruling noted that they do not enjoy such strong protection when working in a pre-prosecution "investigatory" phase.

Babcock's Monday ruling generally indicates Masters can go forward with his claims based on the acts allegedly committed by Blair and Gilmore before an arrest warrant was issued.

Masters' suit argues the two conspired with police to "shape" or "manufacture" witness testimony by giving only selected pieces of evidence to experts who helped draft the arrest warrant. "Whatever title Mr. Gilmore chooses, his alleged actions are devoid of objective reasonableness. In any event, the limited authority cited by Mr. Gilmore cannot render decades of jurisprudence recognizing the unconstitutionality of the fabrication and suppression of evidence by law enforcement officers unclear," Babcock wrote. "Mr. Masters' allegations regarding Mr. Gilmore, taken as true, "shocks the conscience" of this Court and, therefore, support a claim for violation of his substantive due process rights."

Judge Weighs Ybanez case

The Denver Post
Eleven years after Nathan Ybanez was caught unloading his mother's body from the trunk of her car, a judge is considering whether to grant him a new trial or reduce his prison sentence of life without parole.
Ybanez and his friend, Erik Jensen, got into a fight with Julie Ybanez in June 1998. She was beaten and strangled with a pair of fireplace tongs in her Highlands Ranch apartment.

In legal papers filed Sept. 28, Ybanez's new defense lawyers claim that his trial attorney was ineffective at defending him, that Ybanez was denied his right to appeal his sentence and that the term should be reduced because Colorado's sentencing law changed in 2006 allowing juveniles convicted of murder the possibility of parole after 40 years.

Ybanez's new defense team, Chad Williams and Michael Gallagher, presented evidence at a week-long hearing in February and the legal papers are considered a final argument before Douglas County District Judge Nancy Hopf renders a decision.
The judge could schedule a hearing for oral arguments or she could rely on the legal briefs and issue a ruling.
 
Abuse claims disputed
Nathan Ybanez, now 27, says repeated abuse by his mother and father, Roger Ybanez, culminated in the murder.
 
Roger Ybanez denies the abuse allegations. Prosecutors believe Nathan Ybanez committed the crime because his parents threatened to send him to military school as a result of his rebellious behavior.
 
The new lawyers criticize former defense attorney Craig Truman for not raising the issue of abuse with jurors and say Truman was hired by Roger Ybanez to defend his son, creating a conflict-of-interest in presenting an abuse strategy during the trial.

Netherlands To Close Prisons: Lack of Criminals

NRC

During the 1990s the Netherlands faced a shortage of prison cells, but a decline in crime has since led to overcapacity in the prison system. The country now has capacity for 14,000 prisoners but only 12,000 detainees.

Deputy justice minister Nebahat Albayrak announced on Tuesday that eight prisons will be closed, resulting in the loss of 1,200 jobs. Natural redundancy and other measures should prevent any forced lay-offs, the minister said.

CCJRC Report On DOC Employment Related Programs

CCJRC
CCJRC Report DOC Employment Training

Colorado Dispensaries Consider Alliance

The Denver Post

LONGMONT — Even for a roomful of people in the nascent medical marijuana industry, what Larry Hill was proposing was a little unusual.

Standing before a meeting of cannabis dispensary owners here last week, Hill said the time has come to form a trade association.

"People, let's help ourselves," said Hill, who operates The Apothecary dispensary in Longmont. "It's time we become the shining light in the community, so that people aren't afraid of us anymore."

Across the state — as the number of medical marijuana dispensaries surges and local officials rush to enact laws governing them — cannabis business people have banded together so as to have a louder voice in the debate.

More than 100 people attended the meeting in Longmont last week at the VFW hall, which Hill hosted. A day before, medical marijuana attorney Rob Corry hosted a similar meeting in Denver. Corry said he is talking with around 50 dispensary owners about forming a statewide association.

The idea, the medical marijuana supporters say, is to find a way for the burgeoning industry to fill the current regulatory vacuum and perhaps stave off further governmental rules by regulating itself.

"If you wait for something to happen to you, it's going to happen to you," medical marijuana attorney Jeff Gard told the crowd in Longmont. "If you take control over something yourself, you have some ability to direct it."

But getting consensus on a public, self-governing structure among dispensary owners — some of whom are accustomed to operating quietly and have a well-honed wariness of authority — is no sure thing.

During the meeting in Longmont, Gard read a list of rules recently negotiated in Frisco that he said could serve as a start for the cannabis community's proposals for self-regulation. Those laws include things such as standard operating hours, uniform security measures and prescribed buffer zones between dispensaries and schools or day-care facilities.

A number of the regulations elicited grumbles in the crowd.

"When you start talking about regulations," said Kathleen Chippi, who operates Cannabis Healing Arts in Nederland, "you're continuing to buy into reefer madness lies. We don't need to be afraid of a dispensary."

Other advocates, while conceding the need for some self-government, took issue with particular proposals

Register to Vote

Remember you can vote from jail
Longmont Times Call
The Nov. 3 Election Day is coming as fast as ever with this year’s all mail-in ballot.

In just a couple of weeks, voters will have their ballots, which go into the mail Oct. 13-16. Voters may return them to the clerk’s office promptly. The deadline for returning ballots to the clerk’s office is Election Day.

To participate, voters must be registered by Monday.

It also is worth verifying that the county clerk has current registration information.

Taking those steps is easy:

Verify registration at www.voteboulder.org.

Registration forms also are available at that Web site, and may be returned via e-mail or fax.

Residents also may register in person at Boulder County Clerk and Recorder offices at:

529 Coffman St., Longmont

1750 33rd St., Boulder

722 Main St., Louisville

National political debate has garnered a lot of attention lately. But local elections seat city councils and school boards and decide issues that affect residents right here in our towns. Cities and school districts deserve due deliberation and great voter turnout.

Make sure you are registered, and please vote.

Participation makes our community a better place to live.

Mason on Stiletto Stoners

Huffington Post

Yesterday, on the Today show, Matt Lauer interviewed the editor of Marie Claire magazine and another woman about the use of marijuana among female professionals. This interview was inspired by an article on the same subject in the current issue of Marie Claire entitled, "Stiletto Stoners."

Neither the interview nor the story contained any serious "reefer madness" claims, as mainstream articles about marijuana use usually do. Rather, these were straightforward conversations about women who simply use marijuana at the end of the day to unwind and relax, either by themselves or with their friends or families.

Interestingly, there was a common theme running through all of the interviews in the article and on the Today show: these women not only enjoy using marijuana, but they consistently described it as a preferred alternative to alcohol. In a sense, they were saying, "Society accepts that people are going to have a drink -- or many drinks -- after work to unwind. I don't want to do what society suggests I do. I find marijuana to be a more enjoyable and less detrimental alternative, and that it is why I use it instead."

It is hard to overstate the importance of this burgeoning "Stiletto Stoner" movement. Of course, for decades there have been hard-working professionals who would hit a joint or a bong after work or on the weekend. Perhaps you knew people like this yourself, but considered them to be more of an exception to the rule. Or you thought they were hiding some "dirty little secret." Maybe you had your own dirty little secret.

The zeitgeist-shifting aspect of this media coverage is not simply that these women are "coming out of the closet" -- although that is great on its own; it is that they are uniformly asserting their desire to use marijuana instead of alcohol because of its relative benefits. One woman noted that she feels better the next morning when she uses marijuana instead of alcohol; another mentioned that marijuana is cheaper than alcohol.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mason-tvert/stiletto-stoners----makin_b_307004.html

Marijuana Farm In Jeffco

The Denver Post

The West Metro Drug Task Force seized $500,000 worth of marijuana from what's being described as "an elaborate grow operation" in Golden Gate State Park in Jefferson County.

Hunters wandered upon the plants on Colorado Division of Wildlife land Saturday, the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department said.

Law enforcement and employees of the Division of Wildlife and Colorado State Parks harvested more than 1,000 mature plants today, with a Colorado Air National Guard helicopter lifting the heavy bundles from the rugged, remote location.

No one has been arrested, but detectives found evidence of a camp, including a tent, food, clothing, sleeping bags and other items.

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

---

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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.

Udall Finger Pointing On Tim Masters Case

Huffington Post

Imagine being tried and convicted in 1999 for a murder you did not commit. Now imagine those nine years, five months and twelve days you spend in a Colorado state penitentiary for that murder. It happened in Colorado and while the subject of this post is not about the murders, you should read about Tim Masters' case have so you fully appreciate the anger I harbor toward Veterans Affairs, Sen. Mark Udall and his staff, and others who are failing to act.

One of the best summaries of the case can be found on a site I don't always give much credence to, Wikipedia. To really get your blood pressure up, read the story here.

In 1999, based mostly on Tim Masters' teenage drawings and a knife collection, Masters was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for murder. Though some jurors had doubts about his guilt, jury members cited his drawings and writings as compelling evidence against him.

After attorneys for Masters and special prosecutors in the case discovered what could be unethical and illegal activities in the case, including missing DNA, special prosecutors assigned to his appeal recommended overturning Masters' sentence as a result of the DNA findings. The Colorado Bureau of Investigation confirmed the DNA results.

On Jan. 22, 2008 a Colorado judge vacated Masters' conviction and ordered him released immediately. He's been busy trying to rebuild his life after almost ten years in prison for a crime he did not commit.

Should be the end of the story, shouldn't it? It actually gets worse.

Tim spent eight years in the Navy. He worked as an aircraft mechanic, including a stint with Learjet where he also worked as an aircraft mechanic.

Those eight years started when he was 18 (he is now 38) and included paying $100 a month into the GI Bill program. According to Susan Greene, a columnist for the Denver Post who brought this story to light in her Sept. 24 column, Masters would be entitled to approximately $30,000 under the GI Bill that he could use to get an education, a trade skill or other benefits to help him get a job.

You have to apply for those benefits within ten years after leaving the service. Tim Masters was honorably discharged in 1997 but his time limit expired while he was in prison for the murder conviction. Colorado inmates do not have access to GI benefits.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-d-brown/sen-mark-udall-and-va-sec_b_301390.html

Free Medicine Keeping Colorado Parolees Free

Oh My Gov

With states facing the two-headed monster of budget cuts and crowded prisons, many are choosing to release prisoners early, raising concerns over recidivism from both a public safety and a budget perspective. States after all don’t truly realize budget cuts if early-release parolees simply return to prison.

Colorado may have an answer, however. The state’s Department of Corrections (CDOC) has been supplementing early release with free medication for mentally ill offenders to provide the stability they need to stay out of jail. In the two years of its existence, the medication assistance program has drastically lowered recidivism amongst participants.

Good thing, too, because Colorado will be releasing 15% of its prisoners early due to budget woes.

The Parole Pilot Program was approved in 2000 in an effort to bolster aftercare for offenders. Both newly-released inmates and parolees who have broken terms of their parole are provided free medication upon their arrivals to either community corrections facilities or halfway homes. Considering past decades’ declining number of beds in mental health wards, prisons have increasingly housed an exaggerated percentage of the mentally ill.

Colorado’s 2-year-old drug aid program is the result of a decade’s work on alleviating the overrepresentation of the mentally ill amongst the incarcerated. In 1999, Colorado state legislature approved a 19-member task force to research possible solutions; the task force approved the funding and implementation of two programs, one of which was the Parole Pilot Program. The program was finally ready for implementation in 2007.

Over 200 inmates have participated in the CDOC-run program to date. Of the 61 participants receiving psychotropic medications at their community corrections homes, only 2 have recidivated. The original budget for the Parole Pilot Program was $1.3 million; it has since been trimmed to $171,000 due to budget cuts. However, when compared to CDOC’s $760 million budget (and Colorado’s $318 million deficit), programs that minimize recidivism — and hopefully, eventually, criminality — are a real money-saver.

Stiletto Stoners - Marie Claire

Marie Claire
Jennifer Pelham* kicks off her black Marc Jacobs pumps, slips out of her trim Theory blazer, and collapses on the couch. The 29-year-old corporate attorney for one of Manhattan's top law firms has just clocked another 12-hour day, and though it's over, she's having a hard time shaking off her frustrations. (A partner had eviscerated the contract she'd drafted, then left before Pelham had a chance to explain herself.) Still distracted, Pelham orders dinner—sushi, as usual—then reaches for a plastic orange prescription bottle standing on the corner of her coffee table alongside a glass pipe and blue Bic lighter, just as the cleaning lady left them. She twists off the cap, pinches off a piece of the fragrant green bud inside, gingerly places it in the bowl of the pipe, and lights up. Over the next 30 minutes, she takes three deep drags, enough to drown out the noise whirring in her head. Then she eats.

"I hate the term pothead—it connotes that I'm high 24/7, which I'm not," Pelham says, wincing. "I don't need it to get through my day. I just enjoy it when my day is over." Her nightly ritual costs only $50 a month, a pittance compared with the cost of her monthly gym membership or a Saturday night out with her fiancé, an investment banker, who occasionally smokes with her. At 5'4", slim and athletic—she ran three miles a day while in law school—Pelham insists that pot is the ideal antidote to a hairy workday: It never induces a post-happy-hour hangover and, unlike the Xanax a doctor once prescribed for her anxiety, never leaves her groggy or numb. "Look, every female attorney I know has some vice or another," Pelham shrugs, tucking her long brown hair behind her ears, her 3-carat cushion-cut engagement ring catching the light. "It's really not a big deal."

Ending The War on Drugs. NY TIMES

NY Times

Vancouver in British Columbia, Ciudad Juárez in northern Mexico and Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan are unlikely cousins. But together these three places and their ilk have wrought a remarkable change in one of the world’s most important debates over the past two years.

For decades, the idea of legalizing narcotics was supported by only a small minority. But as global markets in illicit drugs have expanded exponentially since the early 1990s, policy makers and law enforcement agencies alike have been overwhelmed by the challenge posed by the prohibition of a long list of drugs. Markets have spread to places that for decades had no significant drug problem, like China and Indonesia, while the numbers of addicts in countries like Iran have grown hugely.

Two significant developments are contributing to the sudden surge in calls for reconsidering prohibition. The first is that drugs are now damaging long-term Western security interests, especially in Afghanistan and Mexico. The second is that production is migrating away from its traditional homes like Colombia and the Golden Triangle and moving into the heart of Western consumer areas like Canada, the Netherlands and Britain.

The problem is becoming so dramatic that elder statesmen, senior law enforcement officers, intellectuals and philanthropists the world over are speaking out loud and clear: The “War on Drugs” is a disastrous policy that achieves none of its aims and inflicts huge damage on global security and governance wherever it is prosecuted.

They argue that state regulation of the drug market would reduce the health and social risks posed by narcotics and generate huge tax revenues, which could be hypothecated to absorb any costs. At the moment, the vast profits from the illegal drug trade go into the pockets of organized crime syndicates and terrorist groups.

The most urgent appeals for a rethink have emanated from South America, where respected figures like the former president of Brazil, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, have highlighted how the war on drugs has done nothing to stop the trade in illegal narcotics but has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths and the perpetuation of ruthless gang cultures in the most deprived areas of the continent.

Diego Gambetta, an Oxford University criminologist and one of the world’s greatest authorities on the Sicilian Mafia, has spoken out forcefully for an end to the war on drugs. In the United States, the most effective group demanding change is Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, or LEAP, which is made up of current and former police officers, including erstwhile operatives of the Drug Enforcement Agency.

Mile Highs and Lows

Westword
As Colorado's medical-marijuana industry grows, marijuana dispensaries of all types and sizes are proliferating around the state. Some resemble swanky bars or sterile dentist offices; others feel like a dope dealer's college dorm room. To help keep them all straight, Westword will be offering a no-holds-barred look at what goes on behind these unusual operations' locked doors in "Mile Highs and Lows," a regular online review of dispensaries around the metro area and beyond. (You can also search Westword's directory of dispensaries for one near you).

This week's review: Patients Choice of Colorado. See our review after the jump.

Dispensaries Pop Up On The Western Slope

GJ Sentinel

Grand Junction is getting a little greener every day as medical marijuana dispensaries continue to pop up like weeds in the city’s retail landscape

Local estimates indicate seven medical marijuana dispensaries operate in Grand Junction, and eight more are expected in the coming weeks in all sections of the city, according to reports from established dispensaries. Medical marijuana has been available through lesser-known local venues. The storefronts began appearing this year.

The biggest hindrance to keeping more shops from opening in rapid succession in the Grand Valley might be property owners such as City Councilman Bill Pitts. Pitts and his son-in-law recently declined an offer to lease their North Avenue storefront to a medical marijuana dispensary.

“It may be legal, it may be the safest thing to do, but I’m going to decline the opportunity to rent them the space,” Pitts said. “In today’s economy it’s tough to turn down a paying renter. I don’t like the idea of selling legalized marijuana. Where I’ve got other tenants, they complain.”

It’s an issue other local landlords have had to deal with in recent months, Pitts said.

Unlike a growing number of municipalities in Colorado, Grand Junction does not have any ordinances on the books about how medical marijuana dispensaries set up shop.

The number of medical marijuana dispensaries increased sharply locally and statewide after July 20, when the Colorado Board of Health scrapped the limit on the number of patients a dispensary can have.

Since 2000, medical marijuana has been legal for those who enroll in a state registry with a doctor’s approval. Patient names are not made public.

As of July 31, 393 Mesa County residents have obtained medical marijuana cards. The average age is 41 for all the state’s registered users, and 73 percent are male.

Almost immediately after the July 20 ruling, seven people inquired with Grand Junction’s Business Incubator Center on how to create a medical marijuana dispensary locally, and people still trickle through the door asking about starting up the business, said Chris Reddin, executive director of the incubator.

“People are coming in here interested in writing business plans, looking at it like a serious business,” she said.

New medical marijuana dispensaries so worried city leaders in Craig that they raced to put an ordinance on the books, placing a 60-day moratorium on the creation of any such stores in city limits. Problem was, Mayor Don Jones said, operators of a medical marijuana dispensary got wind of the impending ban and quickly set up shop, sliding in before the ordinance took effect. The store is Craig’s first and only medical marijuana dispensary and is near the town’s small Western-themed core. The ordinance runs through October, Jones said, but city leaders are expected to extend it another 60 days.

“There was nothing we could do,” Jones said. “All they need is a sales tax license.”

High Cost of Death Row

The New York Times

To the many excellent reasons to abolish the death penalty — it’s immoral, does not deter murder and affects minorities disproportionately — we can add one more. It’s an economic drain on governments with already badly depleted budgets.

It is far from a national trend, but some legislators have begun to have second thoughts about the high cost of death row. Others would do well to consider evidence gathered by the Death Penalty Information Center, a research organization that opposes capital punishment.

States waste millions of dollars on winning death penalty verdicts, which require an expensive second trial, new witnesses and long jury selections. Death rows require extra security and maintenance costs.

There is also a 15-to-20-year appeals process, but simply getting rid of it would be undemocratic and would increase the number of innocent people put to death. Besides, the majority of costs are in the pretrial and trial.

According to the organization, keeping inmates on death row in Florida costs taxpayers $51 million a year more than holding them for life without parole. North Carolina has put 43 people to death since 1976 at $2.16 million per execution. The eventual cost to taxpayers in Maryland for pursuing capital cases between 1978 and 1999 is estimated to be $186 million for five executions.

Perhaps the most extreme example is California, whose death row costs taxpayers $114 million a year beyond the cost of imprisoning convicts for life. The state has executed 13 people since 1976 for a total of about $250 million per execution. This is a state whose prisons are filled to bursting (unconstitutionally so, the courts say) and whose government has imposed doomsday-level cuts to social services, health care, schools and parks.

Money spent on death rows could be spent on police officers, courts, public defenders, legal service agencies and prison cells. Some lawmakers, heeding law-enforcement officials who have declared capital punishment a low priority, have introduced bills to abolish it.

A Republican state senator in Kansas, Carolyn McGinn, pointed out that her state, which restored the death penalty in 1994, had not executed anybody in more than 40 years. In February, she introduced a bill to replace capital punishment with life without parole. The bill gained considerable attention but stalled. Similar arguments were made, unsuccessfully, in states such as New Hampshire and Maryland. Colorado considered a bill to end capital punishment and spend the money saved on solving cold cases. But this year, only New Mexico went all the way, abolishing executions in March.

Prison Contract Changes hands

Alaskan Dispatch
After 15 years of managing Alaska prisoners housed out-of-state, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) has lost its contract to Cornell Corrections.

Cornell's will charge the state about $19,446,000 a year to house 900 prisoners, while CCA's plan would have cost $18,724,000 -- $722,000 less a year.

Either way the state will realize savings over the $20,669,000 it now pays through a contract with CCA.

The 770 inmates serving time at CCA's Red Rock Correctional Center in Arizona will be moved late this year to Cornell's Hudson Correctional Facility in Colorado, a 1,250-bed center now under construction. The move -- via special U.S. Marshals Service planes -- is expected to cost Alaska more than $200,000, Alaska Department of Corrections spokesman Richard Schmitz said.

The Department of Corrections denied a protest of the award filed by CCA attorneys, who said they won't launch further appeal.

In the protest, CCA attorneys Charles Cole -- a former Alaska Attorney General -- and Stephen Williams argued that Cornell Corrections of Alaska lacks the basic experience the state requires, and that a preference system for Alaska-based bidders was misused.

Cornell's bid was more costly than CCA's for the three-year term, but a proposal evaluation panel awarded Cornell's plan more points because of the company's status as an Alaska entity.

Points matter as a committee rates the proposals in several categories. According to CCA's protest, the company gained more points than Cornell in five other evaluation categories.

Over The Limit: DUI Justice

Watch how this unfolds. We may well end up with felony DUI's instead of money for treatment. Putting people in prison doesn't solve the problem.
The Denver Post

Since 2005 in Colorado, nearly a third of those convicted in deadly drinking and driving crashes were incarcerated for two years or less — and 13 of them spent no time behind bars at all.

Drunken drivers kill more than 100 people each year in Colorado, and a Denver Post examination of every vehicular homicide-DUI case in the state from 2005 through early 2009 found that the typical sentence for those who were sent to prison was six years. But the same analysis found that nearly a third of the cases — 55 of 185 — resulted in jail, community corrections or work- release terms of 24 months or less. Included in that tally were more than a dozen instances in which defendants were allowed to plead to misdemeanor

charges.

Some of those who ended up with little or no prison time had prior drug and alcohol convictions, including one man with four prior drunken driving arrests before killing a passenger in his car in a police chase. He was sentenced to two years of work release.

A number of others got jail terms of between 30 and 60 days. And one man got 10 days in jail in Larimer County after pleading guilty to careless driving causing death, a misdemeanor, after a crash that killed a 38-year-old woman.

State Rep. Cory Gardner, R-Yuma, who plans to introduce legislation in January to make a repeat drunken driving arrest a felony, said some of the sentences stunned him.

"We've got to address those areas where the law isn't treating offenders as seriously as it needs to in order to prevent it from happening again," Gardner said.

But the reality is that unlike some crimes, which carry specific sentences, fatal drunken driving crashes can yield a variety of actual charges and a wide range of sentences.

"Every case is different," said Denver defense attorney Charles Elliott, "so in a way it is kind of heartening that there is a wide range."

The Post examined all 202 Colorado cases in which motorists were charged with vehicular homicide-DUI from 2005 through early 2009. Drivers in their 20s accounted for more than half the cases. In a handful of all cases, drinking, driving and death resulted in big headlines and long sentences.

Patrick Strawmatt, a former police officer, was sentenced to 72 years after killing two teenagers while fleeing from police in western Colorado. And Lawrence Trujillo was sent to prison for 48 years after mowing down Frank and Becca Bingham and their children, Macie, 4, and Garrison, 2. Only Frank Bingham survived.

Two other cases resulted in sentences of 48 and 54 years.