Hector Gonzales (not his real name) got his first taste of Colorado justice when he was 11 years old. The boy and his friend were playing with a BB gun when the friend was shot in the ankle leaving a red mark and breaking the skin. Whether the welt was done on purpose or an accident doesn't matter, it certainly didn't matter to the police officer who arrested young Hector, or the DA who coerced the child into a plea agreement without the presence of a lawyer or the child’s mother.
This week the Colorado Criminal Defense Bar and the Criminal Justice Reform Coalition have filed suit in Denver's U.S. District Court challenging the 1992 Colorado law that allows withholding legal representation of a public defender until after the prosecutor has pitched a plea deal to the accused.
The right to legal representation is part of the foundation of our judicial system - right next to the cornerstone of, "innocent until proven guiltily." That foundation appears to be a little crooked in the Rocky Mountain Empire, Colorado is the only state in the nation that has a law denying the Sixth Amendment right to counsel. The 1992 law to deny legal counsel was a cost cutting measure designed to streamline the judicial process and reduce costs associated with defending the poor and possibly innocent.
After all, providing constitutionally protected rights can be expensive and deemed unnecessary - especially with the law and order prison tradition in Colorado. It seems civil liberty comes with a cost too high for the state to bare.
When Hector was went in front of the imposing Fremont County prosecutor he was told he ''could'' be charged with assault with a deadly weapon and go to jail for years...or he could plead guilty to a lesser charge and spend six months in a juvenile program - this was Hector's first brush with the law. When the child's mother arrived - yes, he was bullied and coerced without his mother's knowledge or presence - Hector translated what the DA had told him for his mother, a first generation legal Mexican immigrant with little understanding of the English language and no understanding of American legal protections. She agreed to the plea, in her eyes her son could spend his childhood in prison or six months in a juvenile program - the mother thanked the DA profusely for his compassion and leniency. It is not difficult to see how this 18-year-old law has unfairly targeted poor and minority populations. Groups that fall easy prey to DAs looking to improve their conviction rate and police anxious to appear tough on crime. It's a criminal justice win-win for the state.
Hector spent four months hiking the mountains of Colorado during winter snow storms in a CDOC version of Outward Bound and survival school. At night the children’s shoes were taken so they wouldn't run away. The child Hector carried everything he needed to survive the sub-freezing temperatures on his back or pulled it across the snow on a sled - dog style. He was forced to cook his own meals and put himself to bed at night. He heard no words of love or compassion as he shivered himself to sleep on the side of a Colorado mountain - the taste of justice seasoned nightly by the bitter salt of a lonely child's tears.
While the rest of Hector's friends were learning to read, write, and do arithmetic, Hector was learning to boil snow for water and cook rice. When he returned to school he was teased for being a jailbird, he was teased for being academically behind his classmates, when he was held back a year...he was teased for that too. When he got in fights with the kids that teased him, he was the one sent to juvenile prison; after all, he already had a criminal record.
Hector was 21 when I met him; he had been in and out of prison four times for minor offenses. His fifth time he was accused of a much more serious offense, a sexual assault, which he swore he didn't do. At the end of the interview, Hector asked if I would read to him the letter sent from his attorney - his first legal representation in over a decade in the Colorado justice system. "I still have problems with the big words," he admitted, embarrassed, with smile.
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