The ACLU of Colorado will press for his release from Pueblo County Jail
PUEBLO, Colo. — The ACLU of Colorado filed a habeas petition on behalf of Dean Lopez who was charged by Pueblo under a unique “contempt of court” municipal ordinance for missing court dates and is now being unlawfully detained on a 575-day sentence in the Pueblo County Jail. The petition alleges that the Pueblo Municipal Court charged Mr. Lopez with a crime, usurping the prosecutorial role, through short notations on the court docket. The city of Pueblo then unconstitutionally prosecuted Mr. Lopez without issuing a constitutionally required charging document which would give him notice of the charges he would need to defend himself from. Without these charging documents his convictions, and his sentence, are unlawful and void.
The ACLU seeks a writ requiring Pueblo County Sheriff David Lucero, the Colorado official holding Mr. Lopez in custody, to bring Mr. Lopez before the Pueblo District Court for a hearing on Mr. Lopez’s illegal incarceration. Ultimately, the ACLU of Colorado seeks an order for Mr. Lopez’s immediate release from his unlawful incarceration.
The city of Pueblo, has created the municipal crime of “Contempt of Court,” which can subject people to up to 364 days in jail and the Pueblo Municipal Court has used “Contempt of Court” to initiate prosecutions and jail people for missing a court date, even when the alleged offense that brought the person to court originally carries no jail time, including offenses like loitering or trespassing. In the vast majority of Colorado courts, both municipal and state, a missed court date results in a warrant, not a new criminal charge. However, in Pueblo, when a person misses a court date, non-jailable charges can balloon into sentences of months or even years.
The city of Pueblo routinely fails to produce charging documents for these offenses. Criminalizing missing court, and imposing extreme punishments for it, disproportionately impacts people who are unhoused, people living in extreme poverty, and people with substance use disorder.
“Pueblo’s actions here violate fundamental constitutional principles. People accused of a crime must be provided with a charging document adequate to prepare a defense. That never happened here. Using this municipal ordinance to sentence people to long jail sentences for missing a court date is unjust and must stop,” said Tim Macdonald, ACLU of Colorado Legal Director.
In one particularly egregious example, the municipal court judge initiated a contempt citation for Mr. Lopez, a 55-year-old father and grandfather, in a handwritten note at the bottom of a proposed plea agreement. In another, a court clerk’s notation that Mr. Lopez failed to appear, and a bench warrant issued, purported to “charge” him with two new municipal crimes. Mr. Lopez is currently incarcerated only due to “charges” that were created by this kind of court notation.
This unlawful and lengthy detention has inflicted significant physical, emotional, and financial harm on Mr. Lopez. In March, while in Pueblo County Jail on this illegal sentence, his father died. He was denied permission to attend the funeral. “Mr. Lopez has lost not only his liberty, but also the irreplaceable experiences of attending his father’s funeral and watching his granddaughter grow up, because of the illegal sentence imposed by the city of Pueblo. We ask the Court to recognize that Mr. Lopez’s sentence is illegal, and unconscionable, and release him immediately,” said Emma Mclean-Riggs, ACLU of Colorado Senior Staff Attorney. “We will not tolerate the continued civil rights violations being perpetrated on Pueblo’s most vulnerable residents.”
Mr. Lopez is not the only person who has endured irreversible damage due to the city of Pueblo’s illegal contempt scheme. The ACLU of Colorado spoke with a custodial father of eight who was taken from his children for months, a young woman who spent the last months of her pregnancy in jail, despite potentially permanent damage to the baby she carries, an unhoused transgender woman who has spent months incarcerated in an all-male unit at great risk to her safety, and many others, all serving long jail sentences for missing court.
In addition to Macdonald and Mclean-Riggs, the legal team includes Annie Kurtz, ACLU of Colorado Senior Staff Attorney.