Lumumba Sayers Sr., 47, was found guilty of second-degree murder, tampering with evidence and attempted tampering with evidence. He was acquitted of menacing.

Prosecutors had charged Sayers with first-degree murder, which carries a mandatory life prison sentence. But the jury convicted him of the lesser charge of second-degree murder, which is typically punished with between 16 and 48 years in prison.

His sentencing is set for July 24 in Adams County District Court.

Jurors found Sayers Sr. shot and killed 28-year-old Malcolm Watson at a pool party for Watson’s son in Commerce City’s Pioneer Park on Aug. 10, 2024. Prosecutors alleged Sayers Sr. killed Watson to avenge the death of his son, Lumumba Sayers Jr. — who was killed in a shootout in Five Points in 2023 — because Sayers Sr. believed Watson was connected to his son’s death.

Jurors received the case late Thursday after a nearly two-week trial and began Friday’s deliberations at 9 a.m. They reached a verdict around 12:40 p.m. Monday. In court Monday, Sayers Sr. sat with his hands folded in front of his face, palms together, after the verdict was read.

Sayers Sr., who ran the , an anti-violence organization in Aurora, attended an event sponsored by Denver nonprofit immediately before the killing. He drove from the anti-violence rally in Montbello to Pioneer Park, where surveillance video showed him park and walk toward Watson. The man was shot and killed seconds later, just out of the video’s frame.

Multiple witnesses said Sayers Sr. walked up to Watson, greeted him and then shot him at close range. Sayers Sr. said he greeted Watson, heard a second person greet Watson, and then heard gunshots. His defense at trial was that another man who was present that day killed Watson.

Sayers Sr. was armed with an unregistered handgun, which he is seen on video brandishing immediately after the killing. He told jurors that he carried the gun in his pocket for protection — despite not having a concealed carry permit — and that he pulled the weapon after he heard the shots. His gun was not the weapon used to kill Watson.

Prosecutors alleged the murder weapon was an untraceable 3-D printed or kit-built “ghost gun” that was never found. They theorized that Sayers Sr. gave the gun to the other man, who then left the scene. Surveillance video shows the man running up to Sayers Sr. after the shooting, having a brief conversation with Sayers Sr. at his vehicle and then running away carrying what appears to be a covered-up object, testimony revealed.

During the trial, Sayer Sr.’s defense attorney, Megan Downing, focused on differences in the witnesses’ accounts and sought to show the physical evidence in the case did not line up with their descriptions. She suggested that the witnesses subconsciously decided Sayers Sr. must have shot Watson in an attempt to make sense of the situation, but suggested they did not actually see what they testified they saw.

The trial brought some surprise testimony, with both prosecution and defense witnesses offering information for the first time on the stand and denying that they made earlier statements to investigators.

The supposed connection between Watson and the murder of Lumumba Sayers Jr. was explored several times in testimony but was consistently poorly defined, with witnesses suggesting that talk on the streets tied another man to the killing, and that Watson was that man’s cousin. Prosecutors said that Sayers Sr. was interested in revenge on the entire “East Side” and had been obsessed with his son’s killing.

Sayers Jr., 23, was killed in 2023 in a shootout in Denver’s Five Points that involved at least eight shooters. The exchange of gunfire at 28th and Welton streets on Aug. 19, 2023, killed both Sayers Jr. and 25-year-old Gulian Musiwa. Two women — Sayer Sr.’s daughter and the mother of Watson’s children — were also wounded in the 2023 attack. Both women witnessed Watson’s killing a year later.

Lumumba Sayers Sr., 47, testified that he did not kill 28-year-old Malcolm Watson at a pool party for Watson’s son in Commerce City’s Pioneer Park on Aug. 10, 2024. Sayers Sr. is charged with first-degree murder, menacing and two counts of tampering with evidence in the slaying.

Prosecutors alleged that Sayers Sr. shot and killed Watson to avenge the death of his son, Lumumba Sayers Jr. — who was killed in a shootout in Five Points in 2023 — because Sayers Sr. believed Watson was connected to his son’s death.

Sayers Sr. testified Wednesday that he had no problem with Watson and that he did not shoot him.

“Me and Malcolm was cool,” he said. “He had nothing to do with my son.”

Sayers Sr. arrived at the park where Watson was killed at 4:55 p.m., then parked and walked toward Watson seconds before the man was shot five times. Surveillance video showed Sayers Sr. approach Watson, but did not capture the attack, which was just out of frame.

Multiple witnesses testified earlier in the trial that Sayers Sr. walked up to Watson and said, “What’s up, homie?”  Watson responded, “What’s up?” and then Sayers Sr. shot Watson multiple times from a close distance, witnesses said.

Sayers Sr. testified Wednesday that he addressed Watson with a nickname, saying, “What’s up, little PM?” and that Watson responded, “What’s up?” and then Sayers Sr. heard a third voice say, “What’s up (racial slur)?” immediately before the shots were fired.

“I heard the shots and I stumbled back, and he fell, and then I pulled my protection out of my pocket,” Sayers Sr. said, referring to his gun.

Sayers Sr. was unable to identify the third voice and said he did not see where the shots came from.

On cross-examination, Sayers Sr. admitted that he had not told any detectives about the third voice during the initial investigation, even though he had described greeting Watson, Watson’s response, and the sound of gunshots.

“You never mentioned there was a third person,” prosecutor Laura Anderson said.

“I just told them what was on my mind right then,” Sayers Sr. testified.

“And this third party was not on your mind right then?” Anderson asked.

“It was so — I just watched Malcolm get shot. I literally just watched this kid get shot. I literally had to live through that. I’m still processing the fact that this happened,” Sayers Sr. said.

Sayers Sr. testified he began carrying a gun after his son’s death because he was concerned for his own safety as he carried out anti-violence work through his Aurora organization, the . He was illegally carrying the gun in his pocket on the day of the killing without a concealed carry license, he acknowledged on the stand.

Sayers Sr.’s gun was never fired that day. Investigators believe Watson’s killer used an untraceable 3-D-printed or kit-built “ghost gun” to carry out the attack. That weapon has never been found.

Prosecutors allege Sayers Sr. shot Watson, then passed the gun to another man who left the crime scene with the weapon. Surveillance video shows the man running up to Sayers Sr. after the shooting, having a brief conversation with Sayers Sr. at his vehicle and then running away carrying what appears to be a covered-up object, testimony revealed.

Sayers Sr.’s defense attorney, Megan Downing, alleged that the other man shot Watson and ran away with the weapon. Earlier in the trial, she pointed to a bystander who, according to a police report, heard that other man shout, “I got you, (expletive)!” after the shooting.

On the stand, the bystander, who did not know anyone involved in the shooting, said she actually heard the man shout, “We got you, (expletive)!”

The other man was never charged with a crime in connection with the homicide. Detectives investigated him for potential charges related to tampering with evidence, but could not develop enough evidence to support charges, testimony at trial revealed.

On the stand Wednesday, Sayers Sr. also explained to jurors his actions after the killing.

Two witnesses testified that they saw Sayers Sr. attempt to rub an ammunition magazine on Watson’s hand after the shooting. Audell Thomas, who had two children with Watson and was standing beside him when he was killed, recorded Sayers Sr. kneeling over Watson’s body and rifling through his clothing moments after the attack.

Thomas got into a scuffle with Sayers Sr. when he tried to take the phone from her, she testified.

Sayers Sr. testified Wednesday that he rifled over Watson’s body because he was looking for a $15,000 gold necklace that Thomas grabbed from his neck during that scuffle. He testified he found the necklace under Watson’s hand and believed Thomas had planted it there.

Sayers Sr. also testified that he had no idea Thomas was recording him, even though she stood feet away and told him he was on video and that he was going to go to jail. He said he tried to take the phone from her because he mistakenly believed it was his own phone.

Earlier in the trial, Thomas offered surprise testimony that Sayers Sr. invoked his son’s name after the killing.

“I said, ‘You killed my baby dad,’ and he responded and said, ‘What about Lumumba?'” she testified during her cross-examination.

Thomas testified that she’d told investigators about that detail before the trial. But the lead detective on the case later testified that her statements in court were the first time she’d made that claim.

Sayers Sr.’s testimony will continue at 9:30 a.m. Thursday in Adams County District Court.

Ricky Roybal-Smith, 38, pleaded guilty on Thursday to second-degree murder and DUI in the Denver case, a deal that dismissed the original first-degree murder charge, according to court records. Denver District Court Judge Andrew Luxen sentenced Roybal-Smith to 56 years in prison during the disposition hearing, which will run concurrently with his other prison sentence, court records show.

“In just over two days in metro Denver, Ricky Roybal-Smith murdered three men in cold blood,” . “Today’s sentence, alongside severe sentences in Adams County, ensures that Roybal-Smith will spend the rest of his life in prison, which is where he belongs given his horrific and senseless crimes.”

Roybal-Smith strangled his cellmate, Vincent Chacon, in Denver’s Downtown Detention Center after being arrested in connection with a hit-and-run on June 30, 2025, police said. He was already in custody there when Aurora police linked him to the two fatal stabbings that happened on June 29, 2025.

The Aurora victims, 27‑year‑old Jesse Shafer and 61‑year‑old Scott Davenport, were both found dead with dozens of stab wounds, police said.

Roybal-Smith took a deal and pleaded guilty in March to two counts of second-degree murder in the stabbings, which dropped two charges of first-degree murder from his case, according to court records. Adams County District Court Judge Brett Martin sentenced Roybal-Smith to 40 years in prison for each of the men’s deaths, court records show.

Ricky Roybal‑Smith, 38, was accused last summer of murder in three separate deaths. One victim was Roybal-Smith’s strangled cellmate in Denver’s Downtown Detention Center — where he was being held on suspicion of careless driving and leaving the scene of an accident — and two others who were stabbed to death in northwest Aurora, police said.

Roybal‑Smith was arrested in Denver for the hit-and-run on June 30, 2025, and Aurora police later linked him to two stabbings that happened on June 29, 2025.

The man took a deal and pleaded guilty to two charges of second-degree murder in the Aurora stabbings, which dropped two counts of first-degree murder, according to Adams County court records.

Adams County District Court Judge Brett Martin sentenced Roybal-Smith to 40 years in prison for each of the men’s deaths during a Monday morning arraignment hearing, court records show. The victims, 27‑year‑old Jesse Shafer and 61‑year‑old Scott Davenport, were both found dead with dozens of stab wounds on June 29, 2025.

Police used surveillance footage and witness interviews to piece together the timeline and identify Roybal‑Smith as the suspect who attacked and killed both men before fleeing the area, according to a news release from the 17th Judicial District Attorney’s Office. He was already in custody at Denver’s Downtown Detention Center when Aurora police sent out a “be on the lookout alert” to other law enforcement agencies.

Investigators first connected the two stabbings because they were similar and happened near each other on the same morning, Aurora police said. Both victims were homeless at the time of their deaths, police said.

“These were horrific, senseless murders and the defendant will now spend the rest of his life behind bars,” 17th Judicial District Attorney Brian Mason said in a statement. “Jesse Shafer and Scott Davenport were killed in acts of extreme violence carried out within a short time of each other. Today’s sentence holds the defendant accountable for the lives he took and for the fear and trauma he inflicted on our community.”

Roybal-Smith is scheduled to appear in Denver District Court on April 9 for a disposition hearing in the case of his cellmate’s death. The man alerted jail deputies that his cellmate, 35-year-old Vincent Chacon, was choking and needed help in the early morning of June 30, according to a probable cause affidavit.

Chacon died before paramedics arrived, and detectives found marks on the inmate’s neck that indicated it was more likely he had been strangled to death than that he choked to death on food.

Roybal-Smith previously pleaded guilty to vehicular assault charges in 2016 after leading Littleton police on a high-speed chase that ended with the man crashing into a parked SUV, according to previous reporting. Royal-Smith was sentenced to 12 years in prison for seriously injuring a person and avoiding arrest, but was released on parole in 2022.

He was arrested while still on parole for swinging a filet knife at a fellow customer in a Walmart store in Englewood and sentenced to four years in prison for felony menacing, police said. Roybal-Smith was released early on parole in January 2025.

A Boulder County jury found Andres Eloy Martinez Perez, 33, guilty of first-degree murder on Thursday afternoon, according to online court records. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Martinez Perez was arrested in December 2024 after his girlfriend’s remains were found near Lyons that September. Gaudy Garcia Pina, 37, had been reported missing from Denver thatJuly.

Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty said the jury’s verdict and the life sentence are justice and that Pina “was very much loved by her family and friends.”

“They will have to live with this terrible loss for the rest of their lives,” Dougherty said.

“I hope today’s verdict and life sentence brings some answers and peace for the victim’s many loved ones,” he added.

Pina’s body was discovered in a field northwest of Lyons in September 2024, but investigators struggled to identify her. Sheriff’s officials originally said they couldn’t determine the body’s gender because it had been decomposed.

It¶¶Ňőap unclear how long the woman’s body was in the field before she was found.

The coroner’s office was able to estimate the woman’s age and physical characteristics during an autopsy, which investigators used to find a Denver Police Department missing person report that matched the case. Investigators contacted the family to get a DNA sample and used rapid DNA analysis to identify Pina, according to Boulder officials.

Pina was originally from Venezuela and had been living in Denver with Martinez Perez, who sheriff’s officials said is a Denver resident. She was reported missing on July 15, 2024.

A jury convicted Phillip Torres of second-degree kidnapping, two counts of sexual assault on a child, first-degree assault and enticement of a child — all felonies — following a nine-day trial in October, according to court records.

Adams County District Court Judge Sean Finn then sentenced Torres on Friday to 68 years to life in the Colorado Department of Corrections, the maximum sentence, court records show.

The 14-year-old girl was found in a yard outside a Thornton home in the 9400 block of Lillian Lane in the early morning hours of June 21, 2023, police said. She was lying beside a truck with her arms and legs tied up and her mouth taped shut, according to Torres’ arrest affidavit.

The victim, who was visiting Colorado, told officers she had been picked up earlier that evening by a man driving a white pickup truck, the affidavit stated.

She had a fight with her aunt at the hotel and left, according to the affidavit. She expected a ride back to the hotel when she got into the truck with Torres, but was instead taken to his home and sexually assaulted, according to the document.

Despite being bound, the 14-year-old managed to escape the home through a screen door and attempted to seek help from neighbors before hiding in the yard, where officers ultimately found her.

The girl directed officers to Torres’ home and identified his truck as the one she had been in earlier that evening, police wrote in the affidavit.

“This is one of the most abhorrent and frightening cases I’ve seen in my career,” . “Phillip Torres kidnapped, tied up and then committed unspeakable acts to a young, innocent and vulnerable victim — sexually assaulting her in a woodshed in his backyard. No words can fully convey the trauma inflicted on this brave victim who, despite her fear, testified against the man who committed these heinous crimes.”

Aaron Aguirre-Garay, 40, was driving his truck on Interstate 76 on Feb. 12 when he crashed into a fence, injuring himself and killing his daughter, according to an arrest affidavit from the Commerce City Police Department.

Aguirre-Garay was charged with child abuse causing death, vehicular homicide – reckless and vehicular homicide – DUI in the crash, according to the district attorney’s office release. The affidavit and the release do not specify how old the girl was.

Multiple witnesses saw Aguirre-Garay driving on a dirt shoulder off the road before his truck veered toward a fence, possibly because of a popped tire, according to the report. One witness saw the white truck swerve several times before the crash. Another person who went over to the vehicle after the crash spoke to Aguirre-Garay and said he smelled like alcohol. Witnesses found the girl lying on the ground outside the truck.

In an interview with police, Aguirre-Garay slurred his speech and smelled of alcohol as he told officers he didn’t know what happened in the crash, adding that he believed someone rear-ended his truck, according to the affidavit. He said he didn’t remember if his daughter was wearing her seat belt.

Aguirre-Garay told police he had been drinking earlier that day but didn’t clarify exactly how many alcoholic beverages he consumed, with his answers ranging from two to four cans of beer. He denied a field sobriety test and a blood alcohol test, the affidavit stated.

When police contacted the girl’s mother, she said she had just spoken to her daughter, who said at the time she “was done with practice.” The girl was attending a “league program practice” at Regis University, according to the report.

Aguirre-Garay, who was released from Adams County Jail on a $100,000 bail, will appear for a preliminary hearing at 9 a.m. March 9 in Adams County District Court.

The new system required many sex offenders to receive treatment in prison before they could be released — and then to continue receiving supervision once they got out. The new sentences would be open-ended, or “indeterminate,” lasting perhaps from two years at a minimum to a maximum of life — either in prison, for those who couldn’t or wouldn’t complete treatment, or on parole, for those who did.

Then-Adams County District Attorney Bob Grant praised the approach during the bill’s first committee hearing, saying it would provide treatment to sex offenders while ensuring that “the problem is going to be addressed and that that offender is not going to recidivate.”

Nearly 30 years later, as prison officials strain to hire staff and Colorado’s prisons are filling to their breaking point, the system has struggled to provide the treatment that it is, in principle, at its core.

Hundreds of inmates languish on a prison list, waiting for their turn to receive the treatment they must complete before they can be released. More than 160 of them are past their parole dates but remain incarcerated because of a yearslong shortage of therapists and resistance by state officials to allowing alternative methods of treatment. Some inmates have filed lawsuits challenging the delays, which in turn has seemingly become a tactic to move up the list.

“To me, this is a more fundamental fairness issue of, how on earth can we require people to do a program and then not deliver it — and then it¶¶Ňőap their problem and not ours?” said Laurie Rose Kepros, the director of sexual litigation for and a longtime advocate for sex offender sentencing reform.

Even as scores of inmates sit on a waitlist, nearly 2,000 people convicted of similar crimes have been released from state prisons over the last five years without having ever completed or received treatment, according to data provided by the Colorado Department of Corrections in response to a June records request.

Though they committed similar crimes as inmates who must be treated and are generally considered to be at higher risk of returning to prison, those offenders received a determinate sentence. That means their release date was certain and is not dependent upon receiving or completing treatment.

The result is a seemingly contradictory system: Treatment is effective and important enough to indefinitely stall some inmates’ release, while hundreds of others convicted of similar crimes are paroled, whether or not they’ve been seen by a therapist. The difference depends on what type of sentence is agreed to or levied by a judge. That, in turn, can depend on the experience of a defendant’s lawyer.

So chronically uncertain are some inmates’ release dates that several defense attorneys said they wouldn’t allow clients to plead guilty to indeterminate sentences.

“I wouldn’t disagree that the system does function to keep people who’ve committed sex offenses in (prison) for as long as possible. Whether it was intentionally designed that way or not — it doesn’t matter, it¶¶Ňőap what it does,” said Sarah Croog, a defense attorney and member of the state Sex Offender Management Board, which oversees standards for the prison-based treatment system.

“What it¶¶Ňőap intended to do is to lock up the most dangerous sexual offenders until they are safe to rejoin society, and to prevent them from being on the streets because they’re on some level too dangerous to be free,” she said. “That is not how it works in practicality.”

The Denver Post interviewed nearly two dozen defense lawyers, treatment experts, current and former prosecutors, victims and advocates, former inmates, and state officials for this story. The Post also reviewed more than 20 lawsuits filed by inmates challenging the treatment system, alongside hundreds of pages of reports filed by state officials about the system and attempts to address its shortcomings. Several current and former inmates who’ve struggled to access treatment declined to comment through their attorneys or would not speak on the record.

The Corrections Department declined interview requests by The Post, as did the management board’s leaders. In response to a list of written questions, Corrections spokeswoman Alondra Gonzalez-Garcia said the agency was charged with carrying out laws passed by the legislature and that people released without treatment would still be required to receive it “while under supervision in the community.”

Inmates sue, victims want clarity

In a class-action lawsuit filed last year, several inmates awaiting treatment alleged that the treatment waitlist would change suddenly and without explanation. One man told the inmates’ legal team that he’d moved from 678th on the list to 71st in the span of three weeks.

At times, an inmate’s ability to draft a competent lawsuit appeared to make the difference between receiving treatment and waiting, according to the class-action complaint and other legal challenges viewed by The Post. (In legal filings, Corrections officials have denied that lawsuits affected the waitlist.)

In a statement, the Colorado Coalition Against Sexual Assault said victims wanted transparency and clarity, and to know when offenders would be released and under what conditions.

Determinate sentences — the ones with a certain release date — have frustrated some victims, too. In an interview, one victim told The Post that she was left “sick to my stomach” after the man who sexually assaulted her was released from prison last year without having received treatment.

He pleaded guilty in 2012 in Arapahoe County to kidnapping and sexual assault and received a determinate sentence, for which treatment wasn’t a prerequisite for release, though he was still likely referred to treatment.

“You can’t very well affect change in somebody if you don’t give them resources to try and change,” said the victim, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect her identity. The Post is also not identifying the offender to protect the victim’s privacy.

“So clearly you just let a monster back out on the street with no recourse for his behavior,” she said, “except for having sat in a box for 10 years.”

Despite the treatment bottleneck, prosecutors and state officials have largely defended the system. It’s not perfect, but treatment is effective, most supporters and critics alike acknowledge.

“We’re certainly supportive of it and defend it and its existence as a policy in Colorado,” said Jessica Dotter, a legislative policy chief for the Colorado District Attorneys Council who focuses on special victims prosecution.

She said the backlog has improved and that most of the delays are among offenders serving short sentences because they’re immediately eligible for treatment; offenders enter the waitlist when they get within four years of their first parole date. Successful treatment lowers recidivism, research has shown, and Dotter said district attorneys have supported hiring more staff.

At the core of the problem is a shortage of those sex offender treatment professionals, Corrections Department data shows. More than 43% of jobs in the state’s treatment program — 26 out of 60 — were vacant as of early December. That significant shortage was still an , when more than half of the jobs were unfilled.

The department has also resisted efforts to provide treatment virtually, citing staffing and privacy concerns. Some inmates have sought to hire their own therapists, but the department has rejected those requests.

“The CDOC is committed to providing constitutionally adequate care and evidence-based treatment to the entire population,” Gonzalez-Garcia wrote. “We are actively working to mitigate our clinical staffing shortages so we can provide this treatment to all individuals as quickly and efficiently as possible.”

Is state ‘unwilling to change’?

Research has shown that treatment — which includes months of therapy — is effective, and so has Michael Dougherty’s experience, the Boulder district attorney said. Colorado’s system “would and should be working,” he said, were it not for the treatment backlog.

“We just can’t accept that,” he said. “People won’t have a whole lot of sympathy for sex offenders, but everybody wants to see fairness in our justice system.”

The problems in this corner of Colorado’s justice system are not new. A 2016 audit found that Colorado’s sex offender treatment system spent as much as $44 million a year on more than 1,200 inmates who’d passed their parole dates but were still waiting on treatment. that, in 2013, inmates who did enter treatment were then fearful of being kicked out and restarting the process, causing some offenders to ” ‘appease the treatment provider’ instead of genuinely engaging in treatment.”

In 2024, said corrections officials were resistant to telehealth options because of privacy and staffing concerns. The parole board has long interpreted an ambiguous term in state law — that an inmate should “successfully progress” in treatment before release — to mean that in-prison treatment must be completely concluded.

Colorado’s approach to sex offender treatment is “notorious,” said Michael Miner, a Minnesota expert who has researched and provided treatment for sexual offenders. He has also worked in senior leadership positions with national treatment provider organizations. Treatment involves using psychotherapy to discern why offenders committed their crimes, while making “major” life changes to ensure it doesn’t happen again, he said.

It’s generally effective, Miner said, and has been shown to reduce recidivism.

But he questioned whether Colorado was providing the proper levels of treatment to lower-risk offenders. The 2016 audit report also criticized the department’s referrals, and the pending class-action lawsuit alleges that state officials have referred every inmate with a history of a sexual offense — amounting to 25% of the prison population — to sex offender treatment.

“The prison-based program has been a problem for a very long time,” Miner said. “It just doesn’t have the capacity that¶¶Ňőap necessary, given the laws that Colorado has passed about what you need to do to get out of prison. They’re unable, in some respects, to fix it because the capacity issue is related to the ability to staff, and the state seems unwilling to change the way they choose who needs to be treated and who doesn’t.”

Efforts to increase staffing have shown some success, as the department has offered hiring incentives and undertaken more national recruiting efforts.

But the backlog continues: As of June, 744 people were on the prison department’s “global referral list” awaiting treatment, according to data obtained in a public records request. Of those, 275 were serving indeterminate sentences, for which completing treatment was the only way to be paroled. One hundred sixty-nine of those inmates were past their parole eligibility dates, by an average of nearly a year and a half.

In other words, they’d served 18 months more than they otherwise would have, had they been given access to treatment sooner.

Dotter, from the Colorado District Attorneys Council, said those statistics have improved over the past decade and that officials have worked to improve staffing to reduce the backlog. But she said providers are difficult to hire. There are shortages of mental health practitioners across the country, and that shortage becomes more acute for therapists willing to treat sex offenders in rural prisons.

Recent hiring efforts have not solved the problem, to the frustration of budget-minded legislators.

“What do we do? It’s either something where we haven’t thrown enough money at it — or no matter how much money we throw at it, there’s no solution here,” Sen. Jeff Bridges, a Greenwood Village Democrat on the Joint Budget Committee, said earlier this month about overall staff vacancies within prisons, including within sexual offender treatment.

Budget analyst Justin Brakke replied that the Corrections Department had provided no “roadmap” to fix sex offender treatment in the past.

“People have to want to fix it in order to give you a roadmap,” he said.

Agency spokeswoman Gonzalez-Garcia said the Corrections Department does not “create laws.”

“Our department is committed to working with the legislature, the (Sex Offender Management Board), and our public safety partners to provide data and operational expertise on any proposed reforms,” she wrote.

Calls for reform, judicial intervention

Attorneys and advocates critical of the system have argued that the state needs to look at the underlying sentencing laws, not building out the stable of providers that implements them.

Stan Garnett, a defense attorney and former Boulder district attorney, said the legislature should “roll up its sleeves” and find a solution. When someone is sentenced to an indeterminate term, he said, no one — not the offender, not their victim, not the prison system — knows exactly when they’ll get released.

“The fact that we have hundreds of these people that are just freaking lingering in prisons is just horrific in a civilized society,” Garnett said.

Lawmakers have been hesitant to take on the issue.

that would have eliminated indeterminate sentences and replaced them with firm, determinate prison terms was killed in its first committee. (Miner testified in favor of it.) Quieter discussions about launching a fiscal study of the system were also shelved earlier this year.

The issue is politically toxic: Few lawmakers want to weigh in on sex offender treatment or reforming those offenders’ sentencing terms. Dougherty called it a political “third rail.”

“Nobody wants to touch it,” said Sen. Judy Amabile, a Boulder Democrat who tried to build support for the study bill earlier this year.

In the absence of legislative action, three factors now threaten to exacerbate the backlog.

First, that would require that indeterminate sentences be given to people who sexually abuse children. Legislators have defeated efforts to enact similar penalties in recent years, in part over concerns about the treatment backlog.

Second, the state’s prisons are nearly full. that the male prison population was expected to exceed the state’s capacity in the next fiscal year.

Colorado men’s prisons will run out space in next fiscal year, state warns

The final factor is the class-action lawsuit, brought by more than a dozen inmates, to challenge the sentencing system. It has progressed for nearly 18 months, despite the state's attempt to dismiss it. While other smaller lawsuits have failed or been dismissed because the inmate involved was moved into treatment, the class-action case presents a more concrete challenge to the sentencing system.

George Brauchler, the district attorney for the Castle Rock-based 23rd Judicial District and a supporter of the system, said he was not excited by the idea of judicial intervention.

"I'm a big fan of judges never, ever — never — making law or policy," he said.

A prominent conservative critic of Colorado's Democratic leaders, Brauchler said he was equally disinclined to trust the legislature to fix the problem; he alleged that lawmakers would just be more lenient. He and Danielle Jaramillo, his deputy district attorney who prosecutes sex offenses, both called for longer sentences and questioned whether treatment was effective at all.

In the absence of sentences that are "10 times" as long as current guidelines, Jaramillo said, the option of an indeterminate sentence is still preferable.

"An indeterminate sentence at least puts someone in front of a parole board," she said.

Kepros, the public defender, said calls for reform wouldn't necessarily mean lighter sentences. But reform would bring clarity and fairness, she and others argued.

"I understand people who don't care that someone who’s committed a sex offense is in prison longer, just because of the nature of the crime," she said. "But I don't think that¶¶Ňőap a position that is constitutional or is fair.

"It flies in the face of how our entire court system is supposed to work, where a judge imposes a sentence, and you're not supposed to serve a much longer sentence (just) because nobody bothers to give you the tools to serve the sentence you were given."

Oscar Serrano Romano and Enrique Delgadillo Ruiz were arrested Dec. 18.

As part of the investigation, the Northern Colorado Drug Task Force and the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Front Range Task Force executed search warrants for apartments in Thornton, Aurora and Westminster. During the search of the Thornton apartment, officers found several duffel bags containing bundled packages of suspected methamphetamine, cocaine and fentanyl, according to an affidavit from the 17th Judicial District Attorney’s Office.

Officers reported finding bags they believed were being used to distribute drugs. They also found a parking pass for an apartment in Thornton where Ruiz was staying, according to the affidavit.

Investigators obtained a search warrant for the second apartment on Dec. 18. They said they found a duffel bag containing suspected counterfeit fentanyl pills, cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin. Officers also found clear bags of suspected cocaine, an undetermined amount of money and a notebook that appeared to be handwritten daily logs of drug sales.

Both suspects face charges that include possession with intent to manufacture or distribute a controlled substance and conspiracy to manufacture or distribute a controlled substance.

The pair scheduled to appear Tuesday afternoon in Adams County District Court.

The lawsuit, filed by the  in Morgan County District Court, alleges the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s is nearly 18 months late in approving Cargill’s Title V air-pollution permit.

The center is asking a judge to order the division to approve the permit within 90 days of a favorable ruling and to maintain jurisdiction until the division complies.

It is the second lawsuit the center has filed this year against the Air Pollution Control Division for delays in Title V air-pollution permit approvals.

The center argues that lagging air-permit approvals harm the environment and public health by letting companies to operate under outdated permits, which potentially allow them to pollute more than an updated permit with tighter controls would allow.

“It¶¶Ňőap critical that industrial agriculture polluters in Colorado are held accountable for their toxic air pollution,” Jeremy Nichols, a senior advocate at the center, said in a news release. “The Polis administration needs to stop its foot-dragging, update Cargill’s air-pollution permit, and ensure the company is reining in the toxic stew it sends into our air.”

is one of the largest meat-processing facilities in Colorado, slaughtering hundreds of cows each day and butchering the meat to sell in grocery stores. The plant has boilers, wastewater treatment plants, flares, cookers and dryers, all of which release pollutants into the air, the center’s lawsuit said.

The plant annually releases tons of pollutants, such as particulate matter, soot, nitrogen oxides, hydrogen sulfide, sulfur dioxide, ammonia and carbon monoxide. Those pollutants contribute to the Front Range’s ground-level ozone problem as well as aggravate people’s respiratory systems.

Title V air permits are required under the federal Clean Air Act for large polluters, but states review, write and approve the permits before they are sent to the . Federal law sets a timeline for how often those permits must be renewed and establishes deadlines for when permit applications must be approved.

Cargill’s Title V air permit was last approved in 2019, according to the lawsuit. That permit expired on Jan. 1, 2024.

But Cargill filed a renewal application on Dec. 30, 2022, and, under state law, the Air Pollution Control Division has 18 months to deny or approve the application. But June 30, 2024, came and went without action from the division, the lawsuit stated.

Efforts to reach officials at the Air Pollution Control Division were unsuccessful Thursday. The division typically does not comment on lawsuits.

The previous lawsuit, filed in September in Adams County District Court, accused the state health department of failing to approve on time the Title V air permits for Magellan Pipeline Terminals LLC’s Aurora Terminal, a petroleum products handling and storage facility, and Crestone Peak Resources Operating LLC’s Mustang Booster Station, an oil and gas compressor station.

Both were overdue by several months at the time of the lawsuit.