When the armed men burst into Gina Vigil’s house, she thought she was going to die.
Identifying themselves as Denver police officers, they yanked the 44-year-old woman out of the home. Inside, the men confronted Vigil’s daughter, Zondra Vigil, 23, and her boyfriend, Joe Martinez, 22.
The pair held guns to the heads of Gina Vigil and Martinez. Red dots from the pistols’ laser sights crossed their faces. They handcuffed Martinez.
At that moment, Gina’s father was out on a walk with her young niece and nephew, about to return to the house.
“I was afraid I was going to die, and I was thinking, ‘Please don’t let them (the children) see me that way,”‘ Gina Vigil testified before a Denver jury in October.
The two men who burst into the Vigil home on Aug. 2, 2004, weren’t Denver police or federal agents as they claimed. They were bounty hunters: Devon Scott Weinstein, 32, and Jason Oram, 36.
The men were each convicted in October of one count of burglary and one count of menacing.
Weinstein and Oram had come to the home searching for John Edward Vigil, 57. They erroneously thought John Vigil, Gina’s uncle, lived at the address. They also believed he had skipped out on his bond.
In fact, John Vigil had been arrested seven days earlier on drug charges, and the invasion of Gina Vigil’s home was unjustified, prosecutor Adrienne Greene said Tuesday at the sentencing.
“In any other context, we’d be calling this a home invasion,” Greene told Denver District Judge Morris Hoffman. “Gina is forever traumatized by this. It has had a profound impact.”
The prosecutor called the bounty-hunting industry “completely out of control. “The legislature needs to step up to the plate” and restrict their activities.
“This is an industry that prides itself on cowboy behavior,” Greene said. “This is an industry that has been acting in this manner for a very long time.”
James Darnel, Weinstein’s lawyer, apologized for the incident.
“They made a mistake, judge,” Darnel said. “Who in this room has not made a mistake?”
Darnel and lawyer Jason Young, representing Oram, said the bounty-hunting industry has been guided by an 1872 U.S. Supreme Court decision that they argued allowed bounty hunters to pursue fugitives to any state and, if necessary, enter a fugitive’s home to apprehend the bail jumper.
They said that their clients acted in accordance with the 134-year-old decision when they invaded the home.
But the lawyers conceded that in Colorado, there is no law or regulation governing how bounty hunters should act.
Judge Hoffman sentenced Weinstein to 180 days in jail and five years probation. He sentenced Oram to 60 days in jail and four years probation. During probation, they are not to engage in bounty hunting.
Staff writer Howard Pankratz can be reached at 303-954-1939 or hpankratz@denverpost.com.
