Tag: justice brian boatright
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Colorado justices side with medical malpractice victim in calculating damages owed
The Colorado Supreme Court on Monday rejected a doctor’s argument that would have limited the amount of money a patient severely injured at birth would receive for his successful medical malpractice lawsuit two decades later. Under state law, damages in medical malpractice cases are generally capped at $1 million as part of a 1988 reform…
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Colorado justices, 5-2, say police money used for drug deals not subject to crime victim restitution
The Colorado Supreme Court, by 5-2, ruled on Monday that the state’s crime victim restitution law does not obligate defendants to repay law enforcement agencies for unrecovered money they use to buy drugs undercover. The government maintained the restitution law authorized the repayment of “buy money” because it was either “money advanced by law enforcement…
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Colorado justices allow sentences of probation after prison, even though prison-plus-probation illegal
Even though the Colorado Supreme Court ruled five years ago that sentences of prison plus probation are illegal, the justices decided on Monday that judges were permitted to fix those sentences by imposing basically the same punishment. In its 2019 decision of Allman v. People, the Supreme Court ruled that state law treats probation as an…
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Colorado justices consider 33-year-old analogy’s impact on community corrections sentences
The Colorado Supreme Court pondered an unusual question on Wednesday: When a previous decision relied on an analogy, but the circumstances of the analogy have since changed, is the prior decision still valid? Ryan Wallace Bonde’s appeal to the Supreme Court explores whether Bonde’s time in non-residential community corrections can be deducted from the prison…
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Lakewood police acted unconstitutionally in using drug detection dog, Supreme Court rules by 5-2
Lakewood police violated the constitutional prohibition on unreasonable searches by ensuring a driver’s door remained open so a drug detection dog could sniff inside the vehicle without probable cause, the Colorado Supreme Court concluded on Monday. In the 5-2 decision, all justices agreed with the principle that law enforcement conducts a search if they “facilitate”…
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2024 closes period of turnover on Colorado’s bench | YEAR IN REVIEW
New faces, new initiatives and a new judicial discipline process were among the developments in the third branch of government this year. Although much of the public’s focus was on the battle for the White House and Congress, several stories implicating the courts will have reverberations for years to come. Here is a look at…
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Colorado Supreme Court says license plate corresponding to other vehicle is grounds for stopping driver
An Adams County deputy’s discovery that the license plates on a vehicle were registered to another car provided him the reasonable suspicion required to detain the driver, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled on Monday. However, the justices stopped short of deeming the subsequent vehicle search constitutional, as the trial judge had not yet evaluated whether…
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Colorado justices weigh unique defense to murder for non-triggermen
Some members of the Colorado Supreme Court on Wednesday signaled their agreement with the notion that a defendant need not admit to committing an underlying offense in order to assert a defense to the more serious crime of felony murder. Felony murder is a unique offense, in which a defendant is guilty if he participates in…