Colorado’s approach to gambling is schizophrenic at best, hypocritical at worst. Our ever-vigilant state legislature, no doubt looking out for our best interests, has made it a crime to engage in professional gambling, to transmit gambling information, or to maintain a gambling premises.
But here’s the irony: Criminal laws are supposed to mark the line between acceptable and unacceptable conduct. To commit a crime is to figuratively create a tear in the social fabric. However, the social fabric of Colorado has not only survived but is enhanced by gambling.
According to the Department of Revenue, Colorado rakes in more than $90 million from the casinos. The legislatively created Colorado Lottery proudly announces on its website that it has “returned more than $1 billion to the people of Colorado.” What that really means is that Colorado residents have collectively lost more than $1 billion playing lottery games. Colorado licenses wagering on dogs, horses, slot machines – and on blind luck. But play a hand of Texas Hold ‘Em with the bar taking a cut for the dealer, bet $50 on a football game through a bookie, bet on the NCAA basketball tournament over the Internet, and you, my friend, have made yourself a criminal.
Please do not justify your behavior by arguing that the cops will never know. We are supposed to obey laws, even if we think we won’t get caught. We are supposed to obey the laws because we respect the law. But will our citizens refrain from gambling because of our state laws against gambling? Not likely. And therein lies the problem. When the legislature brands something as criminal that the average citizen finds to be relatively harmless, disregard for that law is inevitable and disrespect for the legal system will surely follow.
I do not believe that gambling is harmless. As a criminal defense lawyer, I have witnessed the tremendous harm that gambling can bring about. I’ve watched the destruction of the addicted gambler, including one woman who was an otherwise blameless citizen until she began playing the slots. Casino managers watched as the machines ate first her salary, then her savings, and eventually the hundreds of thousands of dollars she embezzled from her employer. The casino bosses plied her with free rooms and dinners for her family. They sent a limo to bring her to the casino. They made her feel special as she fed a huge quantities of $5 tokens into two machines simultaneously.
They did not come to court when she lost her dignity, her marriage, custody of her two children, and eventually her freedom. True, the state had no desire that she embezzle. But the state did repeatedly send the message that gambling was an approved activity.
I have been to court on the other side of Colorado’s two-faced approach to gambling. I defended a 63-year-old man charged with the crime of taking bets on professional sporting events, a misdemeanor. His bettors were primarily guys he grew up with.
How much trouble can you get into for a misdemeanor? The state tried to seize and forfeit his family home and its contents, including his wife’s jewelry. After many court appearances, sanity almost prevailed. My client got to keep his house. His wife got to keep her necklace and rings, most purchased 30 years ago. He pleaded guilty to the crime of gambling and was placed on probation.
I thought the prosecution was needless. We were not a better society at the end of the day.
So when it comes to the crime of gambling, I am neither a prude nor a libertarian. I am, however, a realist. Our state consciously and constantly sends its citizens the message that it is OK to gamble. The state has acknowledged that the act of wagering money is not a breach of the social contract between our citizens and our society – except if you do it at a poker table in the back room of a bar, or over the Internet, or any of a dozen other ways where somebody gets paid something for facilitating your choice to gamble. Then you are a criminal.
Maybe someday the Colorado legislature will grow tired of sponsoring this hypocrisy. Maybe someday the police and prosecutors will find a better use for Colorado’s scarce law-enforcement resources. Maybe.
But I wouldn’t bet on it.
Larry Pozner is a trial lawyer handling criminal defense and business litigation cases at Hoffman Reilly and Pozner LLP.
