By H. Michael Steinberg, A Colorado Criminal Defense Lawyer – Practicing Colorado Criminal Law in the courts of Colorado for over 40 years.
A sentence feels final the moment a judge announces it. In Colorado, it is not always. Colorado Rule of Criminal Procedure 35(b) gives the sentencing judge a narrow window to take a second look and reduce a sentence they have already imposed.
By H. Michael Steinberg, A Colorado Criminal Defense Lawyer – Practicing Colorado Criminal Law in the courts of Colorado for over 40 years.
People delete texts for normal reasons all the time. Clearing space. Cleaning up a messy thread. Panic deleting after an argument. Switching phones. Or just… not wanting old stuff sitting there forever.
Introduction
IntroductionThe call usually comes without warning. A detective leaves a voicemail asking you to “come in and clear a few things up.” Officers knock at 6 a.m. with a search warrant. A relative mentions that police have been asking questions about you. Or you simply learn — from a text, a subpoena, an employer, a former friend — that someone has made an accusation.
In that moment, most people do what feels natural: they try to fix it. They explain, apologize, reach out, delete, post, or wait and hope. Nearly every one of those instincts is understandable. Many of them are also the precise moves that turn a defensible situation into a difficult one — and sometimes into a second, separate crime.
By H. Michael Steinberg, A Colorado Criminal Defense Lawyer
In part 1 of this article, we did a kind of surface review of this difficult and complex area.
“I have nothing to hide” is the most natural sentence in the world — and one of the riskiest.
By H. Michael Steinberg, A Colorado Criminal Defense Lawyer – Practicing Colorado Criminal Law in the courts of Colorado for over 40 years.
IntroductionShort answer: yes — even the parts that make you look bad, especially the parts that make you look bad.
Introduction
IntroductionSilence is protected only when it’s properly invoked as a Fifth Amendment right; pre-arrest, pre-Miranda silence can, in some circumstances, be used as evidence, while post-arrest, post-Miranda silence generally cannot.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s rulings in Berghuis v. Thompkins and Salinas v. Texas established that silence does not automatically trigger Fifth Amendment protection — a suspect must affirmatively and clearly invoke the right to remain silent for it to count.
By H. Michael Steinberg, A Colorado Criminal Defense Lawyer – Practicing Colorado Criminal Law in the courts of Colorado for over 40 years.
Most legal advice about police encounters you may receive from lawyers arrives too late. You’ve answered the phone or already sat down in the interview room and answered questions you shouldn’t have, maybe left out a critical detail or exaggerated another under pressure — and now you’re wondering whether the damage is permanent.
Colorado Criminal Lawyer Blog