By H. Michael Steinberg Colorado Criminal Defense Lawyer
In 2017 Colorado amended the crime of harassment by adding a “hate crime” section, which, upon conviction, enhances the penalty from a misdemeanor 3 to a misdemeanor 1 escalating the possible punishment of a maximum of six months to a maximum of 18 months.
Introduction – The Colorado Bounty HunterEvery state, including Colorado, has legal authority over the execution of the bounty hunters that practice within the state. Some states, such as Colorado, poorly define or even fail to effectively regulate the authority and the extent of the bounty hunter’s professional “reach.”
Many of the states grant broad authority to bounty hunters – such as the gold standard of entering a fugitive’s private property without an arrest warrant to make an arrest of a fugitive.
By H. Michael Steinberg Colorado Criminal Defense Lawyer
A Colorado jury’s finding that a defendant caused serious bodily injury (as opposed to the lesser form of injury – bodily injury) in an assault prosecution under Colorado law (a fistfight for example), can mean a felony conviction with a possible – or in some cases such as First Degree Assault (F-3) a mandatory eight-year prison sentence.
By H. Michael Steinberg Colorado Domestic Violence Criminal Defense Lawyer
Recent research has established a critically important, but sad, irony involving a suspect’s decision to leave or stay at the scene of a domestic violence case and wait for the arrival of the police.
By H. Michael Steinberg Colorado Criminal Defense Lawyer
The term “dual arrest” means the police, in investigating a domestic violence case, means arresting both (or more than two) parties at the scene. This occurs most often in Colorado domestic violence cases where it is difficult to identify the “primary aggressor” (the person responsible for starting the altercation usually striking the first blow) and both parties have been injured.
By H. Michael Steinberg Colorado Criminal Defense Lawyer
This is a complex area of criminal law. To understand your duty as a Colorado Driver involved in a serious car accident, a closer look at how the criminal law in this area is structured will help you to understand the dangers of making the wrong decision at the scene of a serious accident.
H. Michael Steinberg Colorado Criminal Defense Lawyer
While I have written about Colorado’s Deferred Judgement laws before, it is a critical part of Colorado criminal law the impact of the “loss” of a deferred judgement can have long term consequences to the person involved.
By H. Michael Steinberg Colorado Criminal Defense Lawyer
There is a complex world of laws that create a somewhat hard to define line between the exercise of a person’s right to free speech in criticizing and making a credible threat made to that judge or prosecutor.
On one side of the line is a First Amendment-protected angry remark about how the judge or prosecutor handled a specific case. On the other side of the line lies serious Colorado felonies that punish so-called “unprotected speech.”
By H. Michael Steinberg Colorado Criminal Defense Lawyer
I have written about polygraphs in the past but it is a subject that comes up quite often – especially in cases where the evidence against my clients is somewhat weak.
By H. Michael Steinberg Colorado Criminal Defense Lawyer
It is common for threats of civil lawsuits to have the impact of a kind of extortion. Typically, one side blusters and threatens the other side with a lawsuit that will “destroy them” if they don’t settle in a way that is acceptable to the party making the threats.
The question is raised as to whether the person making this kind of threat is committing the crime of extortion. To answer that question, a close analysis of the complex crime of extortion is needed.
Colorado Criminal Lawyer Blog