Shazam Kianpour & Associates, P.C.
Painting graffiti on a property that isn’t yours is a crime – not matter how great it looks. If someone doesn’t appreciate your artwork and catches you, there could be a price to pay. Unfortunately, this price is typically high.
Alexandra Natapoff’s book Punishment Without Crime: How Our Massive Misdemeanor System Traps The Innocent And Makes American More Unequal outlines various ways the U.S. criminal justice system financially hurts citizens.
We lead off today’s blog post by asking our readers from across Colorado and elsewhere to consider traffic tickets for a moment.
Are they uniformly fair to all? That is, do their consequences fall upon all ticked individuals with similar severity?
The Denver marijuana enterprise Sweet Leaf has been both large and profitable for some time. The legal pot dispensary has multiple outlets that employ several hundred workers. Sweet Leaf’s owners have reported scorers of millions of dollars in company revenue.
Much of that seems threatened now, following the arrest of all three of the company’s principals on criminal charges alleging illegal marijuana sales and racketeering. A recent Colorado Public Radio story reports that Denver law enforcers began to closely scrutinize the business back in 2016, after receiving information that “repeat customers were visiting the dispensary day after day.”
We note on our criminal defense website at Shazam Kianpour & Associates the often mistaken assumption that a ticketed traffic offense is largely an irritant/inconvenience and nothing more.
In fact, the blowback from a ticket can be far more severe and lasting than what legions of Colorado motorists typically think is the case. We note on our site, for example, that a charged offense can yield “hundreds and thousands of dollars in increased insurance costs.” It can up the odds of a motorist becoming a police target when behind the wheel. When tacked on to other offenses, it can “change your life even more dramatically.”
The term “Winter Blitz” is currently being referenced in many Colorado media outlets. That might reasonably sound like an all-out effort by marketers to lure state residents into shopping centers to scarf up the holiday season’s remaining inventory. An exciting limited-time-only offer for a ski vacation might alternatively come to mind.
In fact, the blitz is something altogether different. It actually features law enforcement agents.
A driving under the influence (DUI) charge can be nerve-wracking enough, but sometimes after a drinking and driving arrest you see two charges: DUI and DUI per se.
But can you really be charged twice for the same traffic stop? The answer: Yes.
One Colorado legislator labels it “a huge stigma … that leads to all kinds of downstream issues related to mental health and educational attainment.”
And he wants the source of that life-altering negativity to go away.
Sometimes drivers make a mistake and the consequences can be severe. It can sometimes set you up to fail again and lead to further charges.
If this happens, the penalties can be overwhelming. In Colorado, you may face a habitual traffic offender (HTO) charge.
Legalized recreational marijuana sales began in Colorado on January 1, 2014 after voters passed Amendment 64 in the 2012 election. The amendment outlined a statewide drug policy and supporters believed its passage would allow officers to focus on violent crime prevention. Opponents believed it would lead to increased adolescent marijuana use and addiction.
Five years later, as more states have legalized cannabis and others begin to consider their own legalization proposals, how has legalization impacted Colorado?
Colorado Department of Transportation officials can’t say for sure whether their notably aggressive DUI enforcement campaigns are having appreciable effects out on state streets and highways.
They can say this with certainty, though: The funding well for the so-called and recurring Heat is On initiatives that span the state has dramatically dried up. And that has had implications for DUI arrest-and-conviction numbers.
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Colorado DUI and DUID Law A Helpful Guide That Covers Everything You Need To Know When Charged
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