A Pueblo District Court judge on Friday ordered the immediate release of a man jailed since January on municipal contempt of court charges while he challenges the legality of his sentence in a case that could ultimately impact other inmates jailed by Pueblo for contempt.
Judge Michelle Chostner freed Dean Lopez, 55, two days after the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado filed a petition seeking his immediate release on the grounds that his 575-day jail sentence was illegal.
RELATED: How Pueblo weaponizes contempt of court to inflate jail time for minor crimes
The judge did not rule Friday on whether Lopez’s sentence was unlawful, but scheduled a full-day evidentiary hearing for Nov. 1 so attorneys for both Lopez and the city of Pueblo can argue the case.
“This is a novel issue, and I think it’s a singular issue in the state of Colorado,” Chostner said. “…To be candid, I am trying to be mindful and make an informed decision because the court is aware whatever I decide here likely does have an impact on multiple other sentences.”
The ACLU took legal action in Lopez’s case three months after a Denver Post investigation found Pueblo municipal judges routinely used contempt of court charges to inflate jail sentences for defendants facing low-level, non-violent charges. The city’s judges sent people to jail for months in cases that in other Colorado courts are punished by one or two days in jail, if that, The Post found.
The ACLU argued that Lopez was unlawfully sentenced to 575 days in jail — almost exclusively on municipal contempt of court convictions — because he never received charging documents for those contempt counts. Under both the U.S. and Colorado constitutions, defendants are entitled to charging documents that explain the basis for a criminal charge so that they can prepare an defense to the allegations.
The Post’s investigation found Pueblo’s municipal judges appeared to follow neither the regular procedure for judicial contempt of court nor the regular procedure for prosecuting a crime — instead relying on a mishmash of the two procedures in which judges charged the contempt of court counts and the city attorney’s office prosecuted them.
In a motion Friday, Pueblo Assistant City Attorney Lisa Macchietto successfully argued she should be allowed to represent the city in Lopez’s case. She said his petition threatens Pueblo’s home-rule authority to govern itself.
“Petitioner has requested that the court declare the municipal court’s exercise of its contempt power and resulting sentences to be illegal and void,” she wrote. “Contempt is an inherent power of the (municipal) court. If the court were to make such a finding, it could have a significant impact on the legitimacy of other sentences issued by the municipal court.”
RELATED: How Colorado’s municipal courts became the state’s most punitive forum for minor crimes
Lopez’s attorney, Emma Mclean-Riggs, argued that Lopez’s case does not involve “a home-rule issue,” but rather centers on the basic question of whether he was provided charging documents.
The Post this summer found no contempt citations or standalone contempt charging documents in more than 1,000 pages of reviewed court filings for 229 contempt charges across 37 different defendants.
In Lopez’s case, the contempt of court charges were added to his case across six different documents including bench warrants and setting slips. The first contempt of court charge against him was created by a judge’s handwritten note on a proposed plea agreement, according to the ACLU’s petition.
Lopez was unhoused when he was first arrested on municipal trespassing charges. He then missed court several times, and was then “charged” with contempt of court, a separate offense that carried up to a year in jail, each time he did not show up for his court hearings.
He was ultimately sentenced to 240 days in jail on contempt of court convictions, and another 335 days in jail on contempt convictions that would have been suspended had he successfully completed probation but was imposed when he did not. He served 90 days, concurrently, on the trespassing convictions.
He’s been jailed since Jan. 16.
In other municipal courts in Colorado, judges typically issue warrants for the arrest of defendants who miss court appearances, and they are then jailed until their next court appearance to make sure they attend. Those failure to appear charges are remedial, not punitive, and usually do not carry their own jail sentences.
Chostner on Friday said she could not make a decision within the five-day statutory deadline that is laid out in Colorado law given the unique factors in Lopez’s case, but said she would still expedite the process. She noted Lopez will now be free while the case is pending.
“Quite frankly,” she said, “I’ll clear my schedule for this case.”
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