In life, there are certain things you don’t take chances with because if you do, you run the risk of paying dearly for having taken that shortcut. If you are charged with a serious crime, one of those things should be to find the best possible criminal defense lawyer that you can afford. When you’re looking at a long stretch of prison time and/or significant fines and penalties, you will want to mount a serious criminal defense that will give you a fighting chance of maintaining your innocence or minimizing impacts to your freedom. Unless you get a court appointed lawyer, this means you’re going to have to come up with some serious money to cover your legal fees. While you may be balking at the big hit to your bottom line, it’s best to remember that without the best attorney working for you, the costs to your life could be even greater. When you hire a heavy hitter, it goes without saying that they will be experienced in practicing law as it directly relates to your type of case, but a serious criminal defense attorney will also bring several other things to the table. An excellent defense attorney will keep you rooted in reality and remove much of the emotion from the case. By doing so, together, you can make clear-headed decisions that will fall in line with the prosecutor’s and the court’s thinking. This objectivity can help take away the depression, embarrassment and fear that defendants often suffer... Read More

The business world has become a more complex and more global mechanism over the past several years. As this has taken place, government oversight of businesses has also taken on greater importance. Regulating business in a modern era has created a greater focus on white collar crimes, which have become more sophisticated and more encompassing in scope than ever before. White collar crimes can encompass a variety of situations ranging from violating securities laws, antitrust laws, embezzlement, fraud, environmental law, bribery, tax evasion and even corruption. Defending against white collar crimes requires a particularly versatile legal team who must have defense skills in a broad range of areas. Their expertise must extend to civil as well as criminal law and they must be able to find ways to reduce or eliminate a business’s or an individual’s liability. Part of what a good law firm will do is also assess how much exposure a business will have in determining how to best remedy a situation. Finally, part of a defense strategy will also attempt to determine how a company’s relationship with government agencies and regulatory bodies will change as a result of criminal or civil legal actions. Perhaps the single most important factor in a white collar crime case is what the defendant’s intent was regarding the actions they took. If it can be shown the person or the business was out to intentionally lie or deceive a client or the public, then defending them can be a significantly more challenging... Read More

When you need to hire a felony defense attorney, you’ll use various criteria to make your decision. Experience, familiarity with your particular court system, track record and many other factors which will come into play. One thing that doesn’t get as much attention as some of the others is how you’ll pay for your legal defense and how much your defense will cost. Obviously, depending on the type of case, your legal fees could be as little as a few thousand dollars, or if the case is complex, involves federal statutes, or requires a lot of forensic work and expert witnesses, you could be looking at as much as six figures or more. In a perfect world, you wouldn’t need to worry about costs, but the reality is that your financial situation will dictate to some degree how much you can afford in legal fees. In some cases, you may not be able to afford an attorney and will have to rely on a court-appointed attorney to represent you. Despite a heavy case load, public defenders can bring significant experience to any case, and they will be able to tap the resources of the public defender’s office. Those resources can include many other seasoned attorneys, who will collaborate on a highly competent defense for your case. In fact, in some court systems, private criminal defense lawyers will accept court appointed cases, meaning that you could wind up with the same lawyers to represent you whether you hired a private attorney... Read More

Aggravated assault is defined in many ways and varies from state to state. In Colorado, assault is broken down into three degrees, and each carries different penalties if convicted. First and second-degree assaults are felonies and are considered aggravated assault while third-degree assault is only considered a misdemeanor. Both first and second-degree assault take place if a person has the intent to cause a serious bodily injury on another person, or they actually cause a serious injury by use of a deadly weapon. Both also have special designations for an individual who assaults a peace officer or a firefighter, which, by doing so keeps them from performing their lawful duty. Serious bodily injury is defined as possessing a substantial risk of death or permanent disfigurement, or the loss of a function of any part of the body or an organ of the body. Serious bodily injury can include broken bones, second and third-degree burns and other related life-threatening injuries. Depending on the evidence that is available, an aggravated assault defense attorney may seek a plea bargain in the hopes of pleading down to a lesser charge and lesser penalties, which can be substantial if convicted. In cases that go to trial, self-defense is the most often used defense strategy especially in cases where it can be proven that the victim is the one who initiated the violent confrontation. At other times, it may be possible to claim that there was no criminal intent and that the assault was accidental in... Read More

If you’ve had a brush with the law in Colorado, there’s going to be a record of it that could follow you around for years, whether you’re guilty or not. Merely having an arrest record can make it tougher for you to land a job, get an apartment or even be approved for a credit card. With the use of technology to do background checks like never before, your past can affect your present with unprecedented frequency. However, there is a way to combat this problem through a process called expungement. Expungement involves destroying records related to your legal issues, giving you the legal right to truthfully state that your arrest or a conviction never happened. In some cases, expungement will not be possible, but in Colorado, a person can also have their records sealed, which is slightly different but still accomplishes much of the same things as expungement. Sealing records prevents access to those records in most cases, but they do physically still exist. Generally, access is restricted to only law enforcement and criminal justice agencies which must have a legitimate reason for wanting them unsealed. In Colorado, only juvenile records are eligible to be expunged. A lawyer specializing in expungement can assist you with the process, which may take many weeks or even months to complete. Eligibility hinges on a person being acquitted of a charge and a charge cannot be related to a violent offense. Individuals applying for expungement of their juvenile records must have a subsequent... Read More

With the advent of technology ruling our lives like never before, the rise of identity theft crimes has significantly impacted our society. Identity theft can take on many forms, each with its set of circumstances and resulting penalties. Identity theft. If a person knowingly uses another person’s personal identifying information without consent or legal authority, then the crime of identity theft occurs when that person tries to obtain goods, services or anything else of value. It also extends to applying for credit, getting a government issued document, or changing or altering a document in someone else’s name. Committing identity theft in Colorado is a Class 4 felony. Criminal impersonation. Impersonating someone else or using a false identity becomes a criminal offense if that act is used to gain some benefit or to defraud another person. Criminal impersonation includes marrying someone else, performing an action that might allow someone else to become criminally or civilly liable, or affixing their impersonated identity to a legal document such as a contract with the intent that it be taken as true. Committing criminal impersonation is a Class 6 felony. Criminal possession of a financial device. If you possess any financial instrument such as a credit or debit card, charge card or the numbers from a bank account, knowing it is lost or stolen, then you are guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor. If you possess multiple financial devices from multiple people, you can be convicted of either a Class 5 or a Class 6... Read More

Perhaps one of the worst case nightmare scenarios for a person is to be accused, tried and found guilty of a crime they did not commit. Unfortunately, the legal system is far from perfect and it does happen on a regular basis. Sometimes, a person is forced to serve out their sentence with no hope of seeing a ruling overturned. Other times, new evidence comes to light, a witness changes their mind, or any number of things can change within the system to prove a person’s innocence. Recognizing the trauma this can cause for an individual, in 2013, Colorado passed the Compensation for Persons Wrongly Convicted law. The state joined just over half the other states in the U.S. that now have compensation statutes for those who have been wrongfully convicted. The statute allows a person who has been wrongly incarcerated to receive $70,000 for every year they were in prison. They will also receive an additional $50,000 per year for each year of incarceration they served under a sentence of execution. The statute also allows for payments of $25,000 per year for every year a person served on parole or as a registered sex offender. The only stipulation is that a person who is wrongly convicted must not have pled guilty to avoid prosecution in another case where they may not actually be innocent. The other thing to note is that compensation is not automatic. It could take a person weeks to be approved for payments and several additional... Read More