Denver Criminal Defense Lawyer Blog

A 21-year-old Longmont, Colorado, woman has been accused by local authorities of accepting an offer of a $10,000 reward to help a Kentucky man find his former girlfriend. Longmont police arrested the woman on Jan. 14 on suspicion of conspiracy to commit stalking. The former girlfriend told police that she had moved to Colorado because her former boyfriend, who was also arrested the same day on stalking and domestic violence charges, was abusive to her.

The female suspect and the former girlfriend were neighbors and friends in a Longmont apartment building. Police said that the former girlfriend told the suspect that the male suspect had abused her and that she had custody of the child the two had had together. The former girlfriend had reportedly moved to Colorado to get away from the man and was trying to change her name and Social Security number, though it is not clear the 21-year-old was aware of that.

A grand jury convened in Boulder, Colorado, handed down an indictment against a local man that accused him of giving a female acquaintance an injection of insulin and sexually assaulting her while she was dazed. The defendant was arrested by police the morning of Jan. 17 and taken to jail, where he is being held on $100,000 bond.

Authorities said the sexual assault occurred in February 2011. The suspect met a woman at a bar in the Pearl Street Mall and the two went to her home.

A car accident in a Colorado Springs, Colorado, parking lot early in the morning of Jan. 15 caused police to arrest the driver on suspicion of drinking and driving. The officers were near the vicinity of the parking lot because of a similar accident just a few minutes prior. The driver in the first accident was suspected of hit and run and DUI but police were unable to locate him.

According to Colorado Springs police, just before 2:00 a.m. a Ford Expedition backing out of a parking space struck a white car parked in the lot. The SUV pulled away from the car and struck a tow truck as it left the lot, officers claimed. The tow truck driver gave chase as the Expedition hit a street sign and a light pole on the street before veering off the road and into a nearby building.

John Suthers, the Colorado Attorney General, recently joined his colleagues in 52 other U.S. states and territories in signing a letter that urged Congress to reauthorize the federal Violence Against Women Act, a law that provides funding to state and local enforcement of domestic violence laws. The attorneys general cited the law's role in reducing incidents of domestic violence by more than 50 percent since its passage in 1994, and added that there is more to do to protect women against abuse.

The Violence Against Women Act, or VAWA, was passed to deal with domestic violence as well as sexual violence and stalking. The number of those type incidents has dropped significantly across the country. But certain categories have not followed the trend.

Denver Health Medical Center, which a former worker discovered was overbilling federal health care providers, has settled a federal fraud lawsuit for $6.3 million. The practice of billing Medicare and Medicaid for inpatient care in cases where the patient did not stay in the hospital was uncovered by the worker in 2008 and may have led to her firing early the next year.

The whistle-blower in this white-collar case was hired by Denver Health as an internal auditor in 2008 after working for the Colorado Division of Insurance. One of her tasks was to perform an internal review of inpatient admissions compared with outpatient and observation admissions.

Officials at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado are saying that three of the academy's cadets committed sexual assault crimes over the past 15 months. Two of the cadets are accused of fondling women while they were intoxicated. The third cadet faces even more serious charges of raping and forcing female cadets to perform sex acts upon him.

The charges came to light just a few days after the Defense Department released a report that noted an increase in the number of sexual assaults at the country's military academies. There were 65 reports of sexual assault in the most recent academic year at the academies, up from 41 reports in the previous year.

Authorities in Castle Rock, Colorado said that a member of the Douglas County Sheriff's Office was driving under the influence when he was involved in a multi-vehicle accident on New Year's Day. The accused deputy has been charged with DUI and careless driving in connection with the incident, and has been suspended from his job. No serious injuries were reported.

According to the Denver Post, the deputy was not on duty when he hit the brakes of his Ford Escape while driving northbound on Interstate 25 around 11:30 a.m. on Jan. 1. The sudden obstacle in the road caused two vehicles to crash into the Escape. Three more vehicles were involved in an accident while trying to avoid the first collision, and another vehicle crashed into the second pile-up, a Castle Rock police spokeswoman said.

The pilot and co-pilot of a small airplane who were arrested by federal authorities after landing at a Minnesota airport on Sept. 30 have pleaded guilty to participating in a conspiracy to transport marijuana from Colorado. Besides the pilots, four other men were indicted on federal charges related to the marijuana, which was found stuffed in hockey bags in the cockpit of the Mooney M20 plane the pilots were arrested in.

Agents from the Department of Homeland Security were waiting at the airport after receiving a tip of a plane landing there the night of Sept. 26 and two men acting suspiciously. Around midnight, with the air traffic control tower closed, the airplane landed. The agents approached the plane and detained the pilot and co-pilot. They found 70 pounds of marijuana in bags inside the cockpit. They had allegedly delivered 46 pounds of the drug in the Sept. 26 trip. The pilot allegedly told the agents that he had been approached by a man in Colorado, who offered to pay him cash to deliver marijuana from California to Minnesota.