From The Denver Post: An Aurora man who has become the center of a far-reaching terrorism investigation was arrested late Saturday along with his father, hours after he broke off talks with authorities.

From The New York Times: Federal authorities arrested a 24-year-old Denver shuttle bus driver and his father on Saturday night, charging them both with making false statements to the government in an ongoing federal terrorism investigation stretching from New York to Colorado to overseas, government officials said.

From The New York Daily News: FBI agents on Saturday night arrested a reputed Al Qaeda terror cell operative who researched baseball stadiums on a personal computer that also held interior maps of several New York venues, sources told the Daily News.

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From The Denver Post: An Aurora man who has become the center of a far-reaching terrorism investigation was arrested late Saturday along with his father, hours after he broke off talks with authorities.

From The New York Times: Federal authorities arrested a 24-year-old Denver shuttle bus driver and his father on Saturday night, charging them both with making false statements to the government in an ongoing federal terrorism investigation stretching from New York to Colorado to overseas, government officials said.

From The New York Daily News: FBI agents on Saturday night arrested a reputed Al Qaeda terror cell operative who researched baseball stadiums on a personal computer that also held interior maps of several New York venues, sources told the Daily News.

20090920_N Zazi

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From The Denver Post: An Aurora man who has become the center of a far-reaching terrorism investigation was arrested late Saturday along with his father, hours after he broke off talks with authorities.

From The New York Times: Federal authorities arrested a 24-year-old Denver shuttle bus driver and his father on Saturday night, charging them both with making false statements to the government in an ongoing federal terrorism investigation stretching from New York to Colorado to overseas, government officials said.

From The New York Daily News: FBI agents on Saturday night arrested a reputed Al Qaeda terror cell operative who researched baseball stadiums on a personal computer that also held interior maps of several New York venues, sources told the Daily News.

20090920 Mohammed Wali Zazi

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By Peter Rossi, LAW WEEK COLORADO
DENVER — The first case of its kind for the 4th Judicial District Attorney’s Office in Colorado Springs ended in the conviction of a man for making a death threat against a judge — which is exactly what the legislature addressed last year.
“It was the first time in this office that anyone has handled a case like this, so it’s pretty rare,” said Senior Deputy District Attorney Jeff Lindsey, who prosecuted the case.
A six-person jury last week found 36-year-old Shannon Dillon Berry guilty of the Class 4 felony charge of retaliation against a judge. Berry told a doctor during an interview that he wanted to kill his lawyer, his ex-wife and 4th Judicial District Judge Jann DuBois, who presided over the divorce. The conviction carries a prison sentence between two and six years.
But the penalty would not have been that stiff without the passage of House Bill 1115, which passed in the 2008 legislative session and went into effect that July.
Prior to the bill’s passage there was a gap in law that called for prosecution if a juror, witness or victim was retaliated against, but it did not include judges. There was a statute that dealt with threatening a judge during a trial, but nothing dealing with acts of revenge.
“I’m a firm believer in the system and the integrity of the system so I’m a proponent of trying to keep it above threats,” Lindsey said. “If you threaten a judge, you should be punished.”
The crime of retaliation against a judge occurs when a person harasses or makes a “credible threat” against a judge who presided over his or her case. A credible threat is defined as threats communicated to persons other that the judge, which Berry did when he spoke with the doctor. The law also applies to threats made against a judge’s family or friends.
Lindsey, through the course of the trial, successfully argued Berry’s threat was credible and that he had access to his roommate’s gun.
The case was moved to the 10th Judicial District in Pueblo after the threat was made toward DuBois is a judge in the 4th.
10th Judicial District Judge David Alan Cole will sentence Berry on Nov. 3. Lindsey said he will review the facts again and then determine what sentence to seek between the two- and six-year range.

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By Peter Rossi, LAW WEEK COLORADO
DENVER — After some fireworks earlier this year, Colorado’s Sentencing Policy Task Force has begun meetings to tackle ways to reduce recidivism. The 23-person task force was spawned from Senate Bill 286, which proposed sweeping reform to sentencing guidelines.
When the bill was introduced, district attorneys in this year’s legislative session were irked, and complained the proposal had not been properly vetted. Among other details, the bill proposed to lower penalties for nonviolent property and drug offenses, including eliminating jail time.
The bill, brought late in the session, ultimately died when the interested parties agreed to spend a portion of the summer hammering out legislative recommendations that both sides can live with.
Colorado’s Public Defender Doug Wilson is participating on the task force, as is Attorney General John Suthers, a Republican, and four Colorado district attorneys representing both sides of the political aisle. Many others, with vast and varied areas of expertise in the subject, are also represented.
“The Senate Bill 286 approach is what we’re all trying to avoid,” said Boulder DA Stan Garnett, who is also participating.

Target dates for completion
So far the task force, which is a subcommittee of Colorado’s Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice, has met three times. Splitting into subgroups, members shave been delving into topics ranging from specific sentencing guidelines, including driving with a suspended license and the penalties for escaping from halfway houses.
The group plans to meet regularly through the fall, with the target date of Oct. 9 to present preliminary recommendations, and then present a rough draft to the full commission on Nov. 13. The commission will vote in December on recommended legislation that will be formally presented to legislators for consideration.
Public Defender Wilson identified mandatory minimum sentences as one area in need of review. It’s problematic, he says, when judges have no discretion when meting out sentences. He cites, by way of example, minimum mandatory sentences for assault on a police officer, which currently nets at least five years in jail.
“I’m not suggesting people should hit cops, but if I punch someone and he says ‘ouch’ that [is] a misdemeanor,” Wilson said. According to current sentencing requirements, “If you have a badge on, I have to do five years in prison, and there is no judicial discretion.”

What’s working, what’s not
Mandatory minimums drive up prison costs, Wilson notes, drawing agreement from defense attorney Lee Foreman.
“The bottom line is the state can’t afford to unnecessarily incarcerate people when it doesn’t do much to advance public safety,” Foreman said.
However, it’s unclear how willing prosecutors are going to be to sign off on changes in mandatory sentencing.
Jefferson County District Attorney Scott Storey says there is no quick fix to revising sentencing statutes in the state.
“You have to look at each area of concern and see what’s working and what isn’t working,” he said.
Another specific issue being considered in a breakout group that both Storey and Wilson are involved in is the crime of escaping from halfway houses. For his part, Wilson maintains that mandatory sentences for people who walk away from halfway houses should also be revised to allow for individual judges’ discretion. Often, he said, mothers with children commit the crime — leaving a halfway house to spend time with their children.
“These aren’t people preying on others,” Wilson said. “It should be a judicial decision, not a mandatory sentence.”
Storey maintains that people who walk away from halfway houses and commit crimes should be prosecuted fully. But he conceded that, “if the person is gone (from a halfway house) for two days and they come back, we look at that differently and we will plea.”
“Rather, if they don’t come back or if they commit a crime, we look at that more seriously,” he said.
All parties agree that recidivism needs to be reduced.

60 percent back in jail
Currently, according to a study by the Colorado Department of Safety, 60 percent of prisoners end up back to jail within three years.
“The system has missed the focus on how to reintegrate people back into society,” Foreman said. Foreman suggested bolstering drug treatment programs for offenders because drugs “are at the heart of so many offenses.”
“Programs cost money, but the hope is the state saves money by adjusting sentences to some degree,” he said. “In the long haul, you provide the skills so that they won’t recidivate.”

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By Matt Masich, LAW WEEK COLORADO
DENVER – The three companies and two men named in last week’s Xcel Energy grand jury criminal indictment have brought in the big guns for their defense.
Bob Miller, managing partner at the Denver office of Seattle-based Perkins Coie, is representing Xcel. Miller was U.S. attorney for Colorado for most of the 1980s and Weld County district attorney for most of the 1970s.
Larry Pozner of Reilly Pozner is representing RPI Coating, Inc., and its president, Philippe Goutagny. Pozner is known as an expert litigator and co-author of one of the top-selling books on cross-examination.
David Kaplan of Haddon Morgan Mueller Jordan Mackey & Foreman is representing James Thompson, RPI’s vice president. Kaplan was the state public defender for Colorado for almost seven years. He and Pozner are former law partners.
They’re all defending against charges stemming from a 2007 fire at Xcel’s Cabin Creek hydroelectric plant in Georgetown, in which five RPI employees died. The men died while relining a penstock, or large water pipe, when a chemical they were using caught fire. They were trapped inside the penstock and died of asphyxiation.

‘When grand juries investigate…’
U.S. Attorney for Colorado David Gaouette, with assistant U.S. attorney John Hardier as lead counsel, charged Xcel with violating five Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulations and causing death. The maximum penalty is $2.5 million in fines.
Xcel subsidiary Public Utilities Co. of Colorado is charged separately for the same violations.
The dead workers’ employer, Santa Fe Springs, Calif.-based RPI, is charged with the same OSHA violations, along with a sixth charge for obstruction of justice for covering up, altering or destroying the journals, cameras and cell phones of some of the deceased. RPI’s maximum penalty is $3 million.
RPI’s executives, Goutagny and Thompson, are charged with the OSHA violations, but not obstruction of justice. If found guilty, they can be fined up to $1.25 million and imprisoned for up to six months. Neither men were arrested when the charges were filed and prosecutors aren’t seeking detention while the case proceeds.
Pozner, who began representing RPI in 2008, indicated in an e-mail that he was “disappointed” by the grand jury indictment.
“However, grand jury investigations are like the lambs in the nursery rhyme ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’, Pozner wrote. “When grand juries ‘investigate,’ indictments are almost sure to follow.”

Puzzled by charges
The Department of Labor had investigated the accident for over a year, then turned it over to the U.S. attorney’s office.
“The government kept its entire investigation to itself,” said Pozner in a subsequent interview. “We shared much information with the government, but grand juries are secret, they are one-sided, so really the best and only place to assert our rights is in the courtroom.”
Pozner said he was “puzzled” by the obstruction of justice charge against RPI.
“No name is attached, so we will ask the government to specify what they’re saying happened and who they say did it.”
It’s exceedingly rare for workplace deaths to result in criminal allegations against the employers. Of the more than 200,000 workplace deaths OSHA has investigated, fewer than 100 have resulted in charges being filed and only eight resulted in a prison sentence, according to a 2003 New York Times/Frontline investigation cited by The Denver Post.

Distributed by Colorado Capitol Reporters

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See the damage here
Party accepting donations to repair damage here

By Peter Marcus, DENVER DAILY NEWS
A suspect accused of smashing 11 windows at the Colorado Democratic Party headquarters early Tuesday morning is connected to ultra-liberal groups once investigated by the FBI for potential domestic terrorism incidents.
Maurice Schwenkler, 24, was being held Tuesday for questioning after being arrested in the smashing of windows with a hammer. A second suspect was able to elude an officer who happened to be driving by the 700 block of Santa Fe Drive at around 2:20 a.m. when the incident reportedly took place. The officer was only able to pursue one of the suspects — Schwenkler — as the two were fleeing on bicycles.
A description of the second suspect is unclear because the men disguised their identities with clothes and latex gloves.
The attack came one year after Denver hosted the Democratic National Convention.
But State Democratic Party Chairwoman Pat Waak was quick Tuesday to suggest that the vandalism was over controversy surrounding President Obama’s health care reform proposal.
“I just feel like a lot of the hate-rhetoric that’s out there has really not been good for the country and certainly not good for the dialogue on health care, and so I don’t think this was random … I think it was really aimed at us,” she said.
Posters on the shattered windows were that of pro-health care reform position statements and Obama propaganda. A flier opposing the health care plan also mysteriously appeared on an outside wall near the building.
Police, however, were “uncertain what motivated the suspects to commit this crime,” according to a Denver Police Department news release.
Originally assumed by many that the incident was committed by Republicans angry over the reform proposal, a trail of evidence connects Schwenkler to ultra-liberal groups investigated by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force.
A woman listed as a resident of Schwenkler’s home in the 1000 block of Lipan Street was once questioned by investigators over various protests, including plans to disrupt the 2004 Republican and Democratic national conventions and the 2004 presidential election.
Investigators in August 2004 visited the Lipan Street home of Sarah Bardwell, an anti-war organizer and member of the Denver chapter of Food Not Bombs, to “conduct pretext interviews to gain general information concerning possible criminal activity at the upcoming political conventions and presidential election,” according to a Freedom of Information Act request made public by the American Civil Liberties Union.
The Raleigh, N.C., chapter of Food Not Bombs was connected with a November 2004 incident in which the North Carolina Republican headquarters was vandalized.
Schwenkler was also once paid $500 by liberal-leaning group Colorado Citizens’ Coalition for “communication” work, according to 2008 expenditure filings to the Secretary of State’s office. The Colorado Citizens’ Coalition is a political 527 committee dedicated to social issues such as health care and education reform.
When contacted by the Denver Daily News, a friend of Schwenkler’s — identified only as Ben — answered the phone of the Lipan Street residence but declined to comment in detail.
“Right now we’re just trying to get him out of jail,” said the friend.
Schwenkler’s mother, Alice Marie Schwenkler, answered the phone at her Shohola, Penn., home but declined to comment on her son’s past when informed by the Denver Daily that her son had been arrested earlier in the day.
Schwenkler’s aunt, Mary Schwenkler, also declined to comment from her Ambler, Penn., home, saying she had not kept “many tabs on him.”
A public records search of Schwenkler revealed little details of his past other than that he previously lived in Milford, Penn., and Hillsdale, N.J.
State Republican Party Chairman Dick Wadhams called the act “reprehensible,” but said it is unfair to connect the incident to Republican opposition to the president’s health care reform plan.
“The people who oppose the Obama-Democratic health care plan are hard-working American citizens who legitimately oppose that plan,” he said. “That opposition has nothing to do with this despicable act against the Democratic Party headquarters.”
Meanwhile, Waak is asking for donations to help with the estimated $10,000 in damage. She herself joined a group of volunteers Tuesday in cleaning up the broken glass and boarding up smashed windows.
She said it does not surprise her that the suspect may be involved with extremist liberal groups.
“I do hear from people from time to time on each end of the extreme,” said Waak.
“Whatever the issue is, it seems to be stimulated in some small part by this,” she continued. “I think we need to have a civil debate about health care and it needs to not be on one extreme over the other.”

Distributed by Colorado Capitol Reporters

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20090824_Embargoed Indictment Press Release

By Peter Marcus, DENVER DAILY NEWS
Superman would travel faster than a speeding bullet to dismantle this north metro methamphetamine drug ring accused of using women as mules and comic books to launder money.
The operation is said to have been worth more than $2 million in meth distribution throughout the Denver area.
Police this month took down the 41-person drug ring, accused of distributing as much as 100,000 doses of meth each month, or about 25 pounds. A state grand jury handed down the 145-count indictment last week, but authorities did not announce details of the year-long undercover operation until Monday.
Nineteen of the suspects are accused of violating the Colorado Organized Crime Control Act.
The majority of the suspects are charged with possession and intent-to-distribute, but many charged under the Organized Crime Control Act face conspiracy and racketeering charges as well.
All 41 suspects are U.S. citizens except for one who is a Mexican national, said officials.
“The dismantling of this methamphetamine ring is a significant victory for the people of Colorado,” said Attorney General John Suthers, who added that meth fuels a large portion of crime across the state, including around two-thirds of identity thefts.
The two alleged kingpins were brothers — 29-year-old Aaron Noah Castro, of Commerce City, and 30-year-old Alfonzo Elias Castro, of Denver, said Suthers. They are being held in the Adams County jail on $1 million bond each.
Adams County District Attorney Don Quick — who is leading the prosecution — said the two brothers used classic comic books — some worth as much as $3,500 — to launder the constant stream of drug money.
In a scene that seemingly could only be played out in Gotham City, the ringleaders purchased and sold expensive first edition “Superman” and “Batman” comic books to launder the money, though Quick said it appeared the brothers were looking to start a collector comic book business.
Police seized about $500,000 worth of the first edition publications when more than 200 officers were involved in arresting the Castro brothers and their associates.
The massive enterprise used women as drug mules; the women would stash the drugs in their vaginal cavities and then distribute it around the metro area, mostly in the north metro area.
“They were working in the neighborhoods we all live in — I’m happy they’re out of there,” said Quick.
An associate named Juan Conrad Velazquez, 30, of Commerce City, was hired to collect money that was owed to the enterprise, according to the indictment.
“Juan Velazquez utilized threats and coercive behaviors to collect money owed to the organization and to motivate Aaron Castro’s runners to distribute methamphetamine,” states the court document.
The product would come from as far south as Mexico and make its way into the Denver area.
“Methamphetamine production and use continues to be a problem,” said Quick. “But arrests such as these make a significant impact on local distribution.”

Distributed by Colorado Capitol Reporters

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Source: Durango Herald

Federal authorities on Wednesday confiscated thousands of ancient artifacts from the house of a Durango couple in a sweeping investigation of possible grave-robbing on public lands, the Durango Herald reported.

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