The guilty verdicts Thursday in a case stemming from a brazen witness killing in Denver are an important affirmation of the integrity of the judicial system.
So far, three gang members have been implicated in the 2006 murder of Kalonniann Clark, who was gunned down outside her house. Two have been convicted of a variety of crimes, including murder. One is yet to be tried.
In the latest conviction, Shun Birch was sentenced to life in prison plus 48 years for his part in the plot to silence Clark. She was targeted because she refused to back down from testifying against rival gang member Brian Hicks.
Hicks wanted her dead because she was an important witness against him in an attempted murder case. In that case, Hicks shot at Clark during a dispute outside a Denver night club.
She was days away from testifying — despite threats and bribes — when she was killed.
It is a tangled web of crimes and connections that gets even more confusing. The man yet to be tried in the witness killing already has been convicted of killing Denver Broncos player Darrent Williams in a drive-by shooting.
It has been a difficult series of cases, but we are glad to see prosecutors persevere and prevail. Violence against witnesses cannot be tolerated if our courts are to maintain the ability to administer justice.
An obscene lack of punishment for SEC staffers caught viewing porn. How is it possible that nearly three dozen U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission employees, paid by taxpayers, were investigated for watching pornography at work and not one of them was fired?
One senior SEC attorney admitted to accessing Internet porn at work for eight hours on some days. Eight hours! Investigators found 775 inappropriate images on the SEC-assigned laptop belonging to another employee. Yet we learned this past week that two dozen SEC employees at seven offices, including Denver’s, were merely “counseled or disciplined for accessing pornography sites” on government computers. Again, paid for by you.
The SEC’s Office of Inspector General disclosed last year that 33 employees and contractors had been investigated for viewing porn or sexually explicit websites and images while on the clock from 2005 to 2010, according to a Denver Post story by Andy Vuong. Many were senior-level attorneys and accountants, with 17 of them earning annual salaries ranging from $99,356 to $222,418, the inspector general said.
The bulk of the cases occurred in 2008 and 2009 — meaning that rather than catching signs of the near collapse in the banking industry, they were busy watching porn.
And then there were 10. The winnowing down of the crowded field in the Denver mayoral race from 18 to 10 candidates is a positive development.
Perhaps with fewer hats in the ring, the candidates will have a chance at better defining themselves in what has so far been a snoozer of a race.
There is no shortage of issues, given city budget problems and turmoil in the police disciplinary system. The problem is that none of the candidates has gotten traction on these matters or others in a public way.
With ballots dropping next month, they’d better hurry.
Do they really need a lesson on this? It would be funny, if it wasn’t so infuriating. Lawyers this past week met with members of the Denver Public Schools board to clarify that if three or more board members gather, it’s an official meeting and the public has a right to not only know about it but also sit in on it. Only three board members, Theresa Peña, Bruce Hoyt and board president Nate Easley, attended the meeting.
Andrea Merida told The Post it wasn’t “necessary to schedule an entire meeting for this. Everything we need is in the statute.” Indeed, it is. It’s all there in the law. Yet a lawyer had to spell it out because in November, Merida and board members Jeannie Kaplan and Arturo Jimenez were accused of violating the law when they met with outside attorneys to discuss the district’s school-turnaround plans.
And a tip of our cap to … the University of Northern Colorado men’s basketball team, which has gone from the bottom of Division I when it first joined the upper division four years ago to dancing in this year’s NCAA tourney. Go get ’em, Bears.
