The federal court agreed that the city is liable for “unconstitutional force” used by Denver Police Department and other officers against 12 protesters during the demonstrations between May 28 and June 2, 2020.

The protesters sustained a range of injuries, from inhaling tear gas to hearing loss from flash-bang grenades and being hit by rubber bullets and pepper balls. One protester’s skull was fractured and neck broken when Denver police shot him in the head with a lead-filled Kevlar bag, according to court records.

Evidence from the 15-day trial showed Denver police officers and officers from other jurisdictions “excessively and indiscriminately used less-lethal munitions against peaceful protesters,” the court wrote Tuesday.

After the 2022 trial, the jury awarded the group monetary damages — $3 million to the protester who had the worst injuries, $1 million each to 10 of the protesters and $750,000 to the 12th protester.

But Denver officials appealed the jury’s verdict and argued that the lower court made a slew of mistakes during the trial, including giving incorrect guidance to the jury on legal theories and allowing testimony from the city’s independent monitor, who issued a 94-page investigative report on the police department’s actions during the protests.

Denver officials also argued that there was not enough evidence to support the claims that the city’s failure to train officers caused officers to violate protesters constitutional rights.

“We reject Denver’s arguments and uphold the jury’s verdict,” the court wrote. “We do so based specifically on the jury’s finding that Denver inadequately trained its officers.”

In an email Wednesday morning, Denver City Attorney’s Office spokesperson Melissa Sisneros said the office is reviewing the court’s decision and evaluating next steps.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado and attorneys for the protesters applauded the court’s decision in statements Tuesday.

“This outcome is monumental and should be a lesson to law enforcement across the country. No police officer or municipality can escape accountability for their violence against people exercising their sacred right to peacefully protest,” said Tim Macdonald, ACLU of Colorado’s legal director.

Attorney Elizabeth Wang with the law firm Loevy + Loevy said the group is pleased the court “denied Denver’s attempts to shirk responsibility for the abuses of its officers.”

Wang, who represented five of the protesters, added that the compensation was an important part of the case.

“But more important is the message this sends to the city of Denver and police forces across the country: The police cannot use excessive force against peaceful demonstrators whose message they disagree with,” she said in a statement.

The appeals court on Tuesday also upheld a related ruling that Denver police Officer Jonathan Christian used excessive force against former state Rep. Elisabeth Epps when he shot her with a pepper ball while she was crossing the street during the 2020 protests.

The court agreed with the jury’s finding that Christian violated Epps’ Fourth Amendment rights by using excessive force against her, the court wrote.

Christian initially was ordered to pay Epps $250,000 in punitive damages, but the judge later reduced that amount to $50,000. His attorney did not respond to a request for comment.

The lawsuit filed by Denver firm Newman McNulty in U.S. District Court on Tuesday described the 2024 arrests as the latest in a yearslong pattern of Denver Police Department officers violating the civil rights of protesters, including using force that left some with permanent injuries.

When Denver teacher Margaret Gutberlet arrived at the quad on April 26, 2024, to protest the war in Gaza, she joined other protesters sitting on the grass and linked arms to engage “in peaceful political expression at a public forum for free speech,” her attorneys wrote in the complaint.

Gutberlet¶¶Òőap attorneys allege Denver police and Auraria campus officials retaliated specifically against the anti-war protesters, and rather than work with organizers to remove tents or move to the sidewalk so they could continue protesting, “broadly prohibited all speech on campus.”

While Auraria officials said protesters were removed for violating the encampment policy, police continued to arrest protesters, including Gutberlet, after the tents were taken down, the lawsuit states.

Gutlerbert was arrested on suspicion of trespassing and failing to follow a lawful order, taken to jail and held for more than 12 hours before she was released, her attorneys wrote. The charges were later dropped.

In a statement, Auraria spokesperson Devra Ashby said the campus has not been served with the lawsuit and was not aware of it.

“The Auraria Campus strongly supports civic engagement and the right to peaceable assembly within the parameters of the law and campus policy,” Ashby said in an email. “We are equally committed to fostering an inclusive and respectful environment where all individuals feel safe and valued, regardless of background or belief.”

The lawsuit also alleges the Denver Police Department did not follow a series of recommendations from the city’s police watchdog after the 2020 George Floyd protests and failed to take action that would prevent the protesters’ constitutional rights from being violated in the future.

As a result, Denver and Auraria police “conducted a mass arrest of peaceful protesters without probable cause, without body-worn camera footage sufficient to document the basis for individual arrests, and without any assessment of whether the individuals being arrested had actually violated any law,” according to the complaint.

A spokesperson for the city attorney’s office declined to comment on the pending litigation.

The lawsuit claims 10 violations of state and federal law, including retaliation, unlawful arrest, unlawful seizure, malicious prosecution and conspiracy and seeks an unspecified amount of money for damages.

Updated 11:41 a.m. April 16, 2025: Because of a reporter’s error, a previous version of this story misreported date another lawsuit was filed by protesters. The lawsuit was filed in April 2025. 

The editor and publisher of the newspaper in rural northwest Nebraska looked in amazement at the resume for her newest reporter, A. Marie Hamilton: multiple degrees from a well-known journalism school. Seventeen years working for the . Several statewide awards for her coverage.

“We were all super excited,” Perez said of the April 2023 hire. “Like, wow, why would someone with that much experience, why would she be here?”

Slowly, though, Perez realized that not everything was as it seemed. Hamilton had a problem with authority, Perez said, and ruffled feathers with the town’s police chief and school board. She appeared to sometimes sleep in the office. Nobody ever met her husband, who she said was a district manager for a local cable company.

“We heard so many different things,” Perez said. “It turned out to be this melange of (expletive).”

In fact, A. Marie Hamilton wasn’t even her real name. Those bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Arizona State University? Never attained. No evidence exists that she worked for 17 years at USA Today-affiliated newspapers.

“In seeking truth, you have to get both sides of the story,” Hamilton said in her at the Nebraska paper, citing the quote .

This is the other side, a story rife with inconsistencies, false claims and, now, a slew of felony charges that could land her in prison for decades. A. Marie Hamilton is actually April Marie Morganroth. Before that, she was April McClellan. At various points in her career, the journalist reinvented herself to start fresh in new states, including Colorado.

Wyoming prosecutors last month charged Morganroth, 40, with 20 felonies in two separate criminal cases in which she is alleged to have falsified documents and lied under oath — charges that relate to her alleged acts as a private citizen, not as a journalist. But Morganroth’s previous stops in at least four states and numerous publications were also marked by falsehoods and fabrications about her background, The Denver Post found.

She was fired from a Boulder newspaper for inventing quotations and misrepresenting the stories of sources she had interviewed about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. In Arizona, she was convicted of forgery after authorities said she falsified documents as she sought housing. In Wyoming, she claimed to be a muckraking reporter with a Ph.D. who was also in law school. She never sought either degree.

Now she’s facing decades in prison, leaving the communities she covered wondering: Who was April Morganroth?

“There are people who are liars, people who are chronic liars, and then there is mental illness,” Perez said.

Two journalism ethics experts told The Post that while there have been high-profile examples of reporters caught ÌęŽÇ°ùÌę, they had never heard of someone committing these ethical violations and then altering their identity to continue practicing the trade elsewhere.

“It’s safe to say this is historically unprecedented in the modern era,” said Mark Feldstein, the Richard Eaton Chair of Broadcast Journalism at the University of Maryland.

None of the editors interviewed by The Post who worked with Morganroth outside of Boulder said they found fabrications in her work, and the newspaper could not independently fact-check all of her published stories.

Morganroth, who is free on bail in the two criminal cases, did not return messages from The Post seeking comment.

‘It was always the perfect story’

In her writings and website biographies, Morganroth extolled the virtues of freedom of speech, of seeking the truth no matter the roadblocks and of adhering to strong ethical values.

She wrote that she harps on honesty and accuracy as a foundation for earning and maintaining public trust. Her work must be consistent and principled, fair and independent.

“I aspire to bring truth, integrity and a personal touch to American journalism, unlike what we’ve seen since its early conception,” Morganroth once wrote on her .

But peel back the lofty rhetoric, and a different side of Morganroth emerges.

In 2007, Morganroth — then known by her birth name April McClellan — was charged with cashing a $5,000 welfare check in Arizona meant for her brother, according to court documents. She failed to respond to the bank’s efforts to seek restitution, authorities said, and attempts to locate her were unsuccessful.

“She then withdrew the $5,000 and disappeared,” investigators said in a criminal complaint.

McClellan pleaded guilty to one count of forgery, a class four felony, and was sentenced to probation.

In March 2008, McClellan was charged with three counts of felony forgery after Arizona authorities accused her of forging a court document, a Department of Corrections employment statement and a document from her previous landlord as she sought an apartment for rent, according to an arrest affidavit.

She pleaded guilty to one count and received probation.

McClellan, after her marriage to Scott Morganroth, started going by April Morganroth.

Bethany Barnes met April Morganroth around 2010 when the two worked at a Sears department store in the Phoenix suburbs, and the two quickly became close friends.

Over time, however, Barnes realized that it became hard to trust her friend’s word. Morganroth said things about her family that Barnes later learned were false. She would say she couldn’t hang out for a certain reason, only for Barnes to find out that Morganroth was somewhere else.

“She was always making herself look bigger than what was actually the case,” Barnes told The Post. “It was just a little bit of everything. You could tell she was being dishonest.”

These larger-than-life tales grew harder to tolerate, Barnes said. Eventually, the two lost touch.

“It was always the perfect story,” she said. “She did it very well. She lied very well.”

Morganroth graduated from , a community college, in December 2013 with an associate’s degree in digital photography. At the same time, she was finishing her first full semester at Arizona State’s .

On her blog, Morganroth promoted her services as a commercial and wedding photographer, showcasing her work in local galleries.

During her school years, she accumulated bylines for ASU’s student newspaper, appeared on the school’s radio station and did a , the state’s largest news organization, covering a variety of breaking news stories, including fires, floods and crime. A university spokesperson told The Post that Morganroth was enrolled at ASU at one time but never completed her degree.

Fabricated quotes and a retraction

In 2020, Morganroth moved with her husband and three children to Colorado, where she got a job in the joint newsroom of the Boulder and , newspapers owned by , which also owns The Post.

Her author page shared little in common with reality: She claimed she had been a newspaper journalist for nearly 20 years — even though she was just 35 at the time. She referred to her role at the Arizona Republic as a “full-time writer and multimedia journalist,” but an archived version of the from that time doesn’t show her name. Morganroth, on her , called it an internship.

She said she graduated summa cum laude from Arizona State.

On Sept. 11, 2021, to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Daily Camera and Times-Call by Morganroth featuring reflections from locals who had been impacted by the day’s horrors.

Morganroth interviewed three Boulder residents, including a naval intelligen­ce analyst who recounted a harrowing story in which, she wrote, he watched Marines perform a heroic rescue of children from a nursery in the Pentagon. She quoted a flight attendant who, she said, was scheduled to work on 9/11 but switched her plans at the last minute. And she detailed the supposed experiences of a mental health clinician who, she wrote, didn’t know whether his daughter was alive or dead on Sept. 11.

It turned out that the three individuals said very little of what Morganroth wrote.

A few weeks after its publication, the Daily Camera , saying in a lengthy editor’s note that the story “substantially misrepresented” statements from the three subjects and fabricated many of the quotations attributed to them. One of the sources called his purported quotes “fictional.”

“I was absolutely horrified — like blood-pressure-spiked horrified,” said Mark Pfundstein, the former naval intelligence analyst, in an interview with The Post. “I thought, ‘My God, what will my colleagues think about this?'”

Morganroth, after the retraction, was fired, according to a from one of her colleagues. Mitchell Byars, who covered courts and crime for the paper, called for more due diligence in the hiring process.

“I feel there were some frankly easily identifiable red flags that I brought up with editors after her hire,” he wrote. Byars did not identify those warning signs on social media and declined to be interviewed for this story.

Colleagues, though, had noticed that Morganroth frequently retweeted far-right conservatives on social media, including U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert. Standard social media policies at newspapers forbid this type of political activity.

John Vahlenkamp, one of the editors who retracted the story, declined to comment on his investigation into Morganroth’s work or her tenure in Boulder.

An incident like this could have ended Morganroth’s journalism career. Instead, she pivoted.

New state, new name

In 2022, Morganroth popped up in the Wyoming journalism scene under a new byline: A. Marie Hamilton.

She worked for the , a newspaper in a small community in southeast Wyoming near the Nebraska border, for roughly a year, according to a review of her bylines on the site. Current ownership could not confirm her exact employment dates.

Morganroth’s father, in text messages with Barnes, the friend from Arizona, suggested that he knew that his daughter was running from trouble.

Child protective services “from Colorado was on April; she ran to Cheyenne this time,” Bill McClellan wrote to Barnes in June 2022, according to texts reviewed by The Post. “She thinks it’s okay to keep pulling her lieing (sic) and (expletive). Not working for her, I’d say.”

A few months later, McClellan told Barnes that “they will catch her soon enough.” McClellan died in 2024.

In April 2023, Morganroth took the job in Sidney, Nebraska.

Perez, the editor and publisher there, said Morganroth appeared to be “super knowledgeable” with professional writing chops. The editor said she never worried about the content of her reporter’s work — and only recently learned about what happened at the Daily Camera.

Still, Morganroth was difficult to manage, Perez said.

“Nobody knew what she knew,” Perez said. “Her attitude was: everyone was stupid.”

Many details about her life, though, just didn’t add up. The cable company that her husband supposedly worked for advertised in the paper. So Perez asked about him. The company said they had no idea what she was talking about.

Only four months after getting to the state, Morganroth said she was putting in her two-week notice. Perez didn’t fight her. On her way out, Morganroth told colleagues that the Nebraska newspaper company was starting a new outfit in Cheyenne and that they had asked her to be the editor, Perez said. None of this was true.

“That level of lying and thinking you’ll get away with it that goes beyond telling falsehoods,” Perez said. “That’s where you live in your own reality.”

A slew of felony charges

Once again, Morganroth started anew.

She returned to Wyoming, landing a job at the in southeast Wyoming, an hour north of Cheyenne.

Her listed accolades just kept growing: She now boasted more than 25 years of journalism experience, despite being under 40. The paper, in its , said she previously worked for National Public Radio and iHeartMedia. The Post could find no evidence of these employment stints.

Morganroth, still going by “Marie Hamilton,” earned the nickname “Little Miss Fact-Checker” by her peers at Wyoming Press Association conventions, the paper said, for “always providing clarifying and enriching accurate information about various news topics in our state.”

She again falsely claimed to hold both bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Arizona State, and said she was in the midst of obtaining a law degree from the University of Wyoming. A university spokesperson said she was never enrolled there.

After the Record-Times briefly ceased publication, Morganroth launched her own media outlet called the , an “independent, community-centered” news organization focused on southeast Wyoming.

Its stated values: honesty and accuracy, integrity, ethical and watchdog journalism. Its motto: “Independent. Local. Unafraid.”

“I am unafraid to hold the accountable — accountable — and I have faced my fair share of credible threats, attempts to intimidate, blackmail and discredit because I refuse to allow elected officials to have a get-out-of-jail-free card,” she wrote.

Her journalism, in practice, often blurred the line between objective news coverage and her own opinions.

On social media, Morganroth frequently posted her thoughts on gun rights, supposed corruption in the Democratic Party and President Donald Trump.

Morganroth took a particular interest in a planned near the town of Chugwater in southeast Wyoming. She published a on Nov. 25 — which she called an “investigation” — in which she falsely drew links between solar and wind farms and disabilities in children.

The story, published under a “Wyoming Sentinel Staff” byline, quoted a “Marie Hamilton” numerous times as an advocate for children with disabilities. Hamilton is listed on the news outlet’s website as the owner, publisher and managing editor. There’s no indication anyone else worked there.

Her involvement in the project, though, was about to get much more serious after she personally lobbied against the wind farm.

On March 9, prosecutors in Platte County, Wyoming, arrested Morgranroth and related to her opposition to the Chugwater energy project. Authorities allege the local journalist concocted letters of support from two area residents expressing their supposed objections to the project and lied under oath during a public hearing held by a state panel considering the proposal.

In a pre-hearing statement, she asserted she held three degrees from Arizona State, was pursuing a law degree, owned an unspecified local brand and operated various family ranching businesses in several states, an arrest affidavit states. She introduced herself as “Dr. Marie Hamilton.”

Two weeks after the initial charges, prosecutors in the same district against Morganroth. Authorities say she forged documents purporting to show that she had prequalified for a federal loan as she attempted to purchase a home in Chugwater, according to an arrest affidavit cited in local media reports.

Morganroth also claimed that she and her husband had been approved for a federal grant to do construction on the property to allow them to qualify for the loan, prosecutors alleged, submitting to the sellers supposed invoices from two companies for the work. Both companies told investigators and The Post that they never did jobs on this property.

“It was so impressive,” Jessica Logue, owner and CEO of Cowgirl Demolition and Excavating, told The Post. “She used my logo, faded it with an opaque excavator, and had all the verbiage right. I was like, ‘Who is this?'”

‘Detrimental to journalism’

Up until the arrest, people in southern Wyoming knew her as Marie Hamilton. When the news broke, editors at the papers she worked for expressed their disappointment and confusion.

Klark Byrd, managing editor at the Casper-based , said Morganroth covered the state legislature for a month this year, but she never filed paperwork with human resources to get paid. Despite numerous reminders, he said in an interview, the reporter wouldn’t submit her forms.

Boyd said he fact-checked her work and it was always clean.

“It’s always detrimental to journalism when someone in the profession breaks that kind of trust,” he said. “It wasn’t just public trust; she broke the trust of colleagues. It floored me when all the pieces finally came together.”

Lying about a journalist’s true identity calls into question what else they might have fabricated in their stories, the two journalism experts said, calling trust a bedrock principle for the industry.

“You expect this maybe out of priests who get bounced from parish to parish or doctors who get their licenses pulled in one state and move to another,” said Feldstein, the University of Maryland ethics expert. “But I’ve never heard of a journalist doing that.”

Publicly advocating on a topic you’re also covering as a reporter is a clear violation of journalism ethics, said Bob Steele, a former professor and director of the at DePauw University in Indiana. Since Morganroth served as the Wyoming Sentinel’s publisher, editor and reporter, there’s an even greater obligation to be honest, independent and fair in her reporting, he said.

Quoting oneself in the third person, meanwhile, breaks every rule of journalism, both experts said.

“It’s astounding,” Steele said. “It’s problematic to the nth degree.”

Steele and Feldstein said it’s important to characterize Morganroth’s behavior as an extreme outlier in the industry. The public, they said, should not see this as all that’s wrong with journalism. Even Pfundstein, the intelligence analyst whose story Morganroth mispresented in the 9/11 remembrance, said the incident did not shake his confidence or trust in the media.

Those who knew Morganroth previously said they weren’t entirely surprised by her alleged actions. They were just surprised she got caught.

“Part of me thinks she’ll wiggle out of this; that is her forte,” said Perez, the Nebraska editor. “Getting out of things is kind of her milieu. I’m popping some popcorn to see how she’ll get out of this one.”

But it will remain in the same spot it has occupied since 1999. And it is open for business.

It’s a testament to the resiliency of independent booksellers that the Highland institution has remained open, and a new independent bookstore in Uptown recently opened, in the face of pressure from national chains and buyers’ online habits. Trade organizations report rising numbers of new stores, a trend they say gained momentum as readers rallied to support local businesses when the pandemic hit in 2020.

While staying put, has changed ownership. Matt Aragon-Shafi, the former manager, has taken over the business from Lois Harvey, who retired in February after more than 40 years as an independent bookstore owner in Denver.

Aragon-Shafi and Harvey have mixed emotions about their new roles. Aragon-Shafi said moving from an employee to owner feels good. “But it’s overwhelming in a way.”

Harvey turned in her keys to the building at 3434 W. 32nd Ave. on Feb. 3.

“There was a certain amount of relief,” Harvey said.

She oversaw the moving of roughly 40,000 books to go from a 3,000-square-foot space to the current 1,000-square-foot space at the front of the building.

“It had been so much work getting that done,” Harvey said.

But it’s sad “to see what had been built and dismantled,” she added.

West Side decided to scale back because the lease was set to significantly increase. Grant Gingerich bought the building in 2021 from Harvey’s brother, Jim Harvey. Gingerich said high commercial property taxes and increases in other business expenses necessitated raising the rent.

Gingerich said he wants to work with West Side Books to keep it in the neighborhood where he has another building up the street and has been part-owner of a local restaurant for about 18 years. He’s looking at using the space behind the bookstore for events and an adjacent vacant lot as community open space.

“My wife and I are dug in. This is our community,” Gingerich said. “There’s nothing more that I want than to have West Side Books thrive for another 25 years.”

Rising costs, the dominance of online behemoth Amazon in bookselling and disruptions during the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic shook independent bookstores nationwide for years.

In Denver, a seismic event struck the bookstore scene in 2024 when the Tattered Cover, a nationally renowned independent bookseller, was sold to the Barnes & Noble chain. The 50-plus-year-old Denver store filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2023.

However, Harvey, who opened her first bookstore in 1980, said the market started evolving during the pandemic when local stores, with the help of industry organizations, started or expanded online sales. She said customers stepped up to support local businesses and protests of George Floyd’s murder boosted interest in reading about politics and culture.

“The bookstores I know of are doing well. I’m just so proud of them,” Harvey said.

The state of independent bookstores in the Denver area and the region is positive, said Heather Duncan, the executive director of the  . The organization has members in 14 states.

“Our membership is increasing every year fairly significantly. The (store) openings are outpacing the closings by far,” Duncan said.

The association has 82 members in Colorado. Not all independent bookstores are members. In a “good guestimate” of the regional growth of the local stores, or “indies,” Duncan said at least a third of the association’s 328 members opened in the past two years.

“I’ve been in the bookstore business for 40 years and this has been one of the biggest growth periods that I’ve seen,” Duncan said.

The a national trade organization for indie stores, reported 3,281 member locations in 2025, up from 2,844 in 2024 and 2,209 in 2020.

Duncan agreed with Harvey that more people turned to books and wanted to stand behind local businesses when the pandemic hit. Right before COVID-19 broke out, started. The platform is an online bookseller geared to independent stores and shoppers looking for an alternative to Amazon. As a certified B corporation, which meets certain social and environmental standards, it shares its profits with bookstores.

“That allowed a whole bunch of bookstores, especially small mom-and-pop stores, pop-up stores and mobile bookstores, to have this really strong web presence instantly where they could sell books online and ship them to customers,” Duncan said.

And there is “a whole bunch of young and demographically diverse people opening bookstores,” she said.

Harvey said younger people are increasingly reading physical books rather than scrolling on screens. They’re attracted to beautifully illustrated and decorated first editions and books of different genres, she said.

One bookstore maintains, one starts anew

As West Side Books maintains its foothold in the Highland neighborhood, a new independent bookstore has opened its doors in Denver’s Uptown neighborhood. officially opened Feb. 20 at 1700 Humboldt St, once the site of the well-known Strings Restaurant.

A partner in the new venture is not new to the indie scene. Kwame Spearman was CEO of the Tattered Cover when the store filed for bankruptcy. He and his current partner, Rich Garvin, made an unsuccessful bid to buy Tattered Cover out of bankruptcy.

Deciding to build an independent bookstore from scratch, Garvin bought a 9,000-square-foot building for $2.9 million. Besides the bookstore, the building houses two restaurants and has space for a third.

“I had spent all this time learning about bookstores. I thought I still really wanted to have a bookstore,” Garvin said. “I decided it would be good to have a building that you own to put your bookstore in because many bookstores fail because of the rent.”

Garvin moved from San Francisco to Denver after the pandemic started. He had retired from his business that organized conferences and managed events for large corporations. He met Spearman through a mutual friend.

While upbeat about the new bookstore, which has a children’s section and a coffee bar, Spearman acknowledged his last time in the business didn’t end well.

“I would say that my experience as CEO was probably ultimately one of the bigger failures I’ve encountered,” Spearman said. “I think over the past two years, there’s been a lot of time to reflect.”

Spearman and two other Denver natives, David Back and Alan Frosh, bought the Tattered Cover in 2020 as part of an investment team. The company struggled to compete with large retailers such as Amazon and the pandemic.

“I think that when we took on the business, it was a business that was on fumes and basically headed towards bankruptcy during a really difficult period,” Spearman said.

The owners opened new Tattered Cover stores in Westminster and Colorado Springs and completed the move of the Lower Downtown location to a new one in McGregor Square.

Spearman took a leave of absence as CEO in 2023 to run for Denver mayor and then stepped down ahead of an unsuccessful run for the Denver school board. Before then, some Tattered Cover employees made claims of bullying and ageism, allegations that Spearman denied.

In an email, Back, Spearman’s former business partner at Tattered Cover, disputed Spearman’s characterization of the business when they took over. He echoed employees’ complaints about Spearman.

Spearman, who attended Yale Law School and Harvard Business School, said he got back into the bookstore business faster than he anticipated.

“As long as I am in Denver, I am going to, in some way, shape or form, try to be involved in the local economy,” Spearman said. “I think the thing that separates really outstanding cities from OK cities is when you have a thriving local environment.”

Spearman and Garvin want to make the Denver Book Society a community gathering space. They have started board-game nights and are hosting book clubs. They’re partnering with the theater company at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts on events at the store.

Garvin’s dog, Cooper, an Australian shepherd, is a kind of mascot for the store. A “Cooperish” mug of a dog is part of the store’s logo.

“I fundamentally believe the same thing I felt with Tattered Cover, that books are this unifier,” Spearman said. “They are this opportunity to create community. And we need a third space now more than ever.”

He and Garvin are encouraged so far by the response to the new store. They sold 1,500 books and 500 cups of coffee over their opening weekend.

Aragon-Shafi at West Side Books said the community has supported the business as it makes the transition in ownership. People volunteered advice and spaces to store items and books. They helped with such tasks as alphabetizing books.

Although the store has culled most of its used books, Aragon-Shafi plans to still sell some of the used and rare inventory that West Side was first known for. He said his opportunity to run a business is part of a family tradition.

“My dad owned a convenience store for a long time. My grandpa owned an import store when he came here from India,” he said.

Aragon-Shafi also feels he is entrusted with keeping the beloved community bookstore going. He was a regular at West Side since attending nearby North High School.

“I see other bookstores that have been here for years and years, and I want us to be here for years and years.”

Updated March 6, 2026, to add comment from former Tattered Cover co-owner.

Some are from health care workers and veterans praising Pretti’s work as an intensive-care nurse at the Department of Veterans Affairs. Others are from strangers who hail Pretti as a hero for his final actions, when he tried to help a woman shoved to the ground by a Customs and Border Protection agent, only to be tackled and shot multiple times.

“There’s probably 10 more in the mailbox today,” Pretti’s father, Michael, said Tuesday in the couple’s first lengthy interview as he and his wife, Susan, held hands and talked about memories of their son, and the nightmare of anger, grief and unanswered questions they have faced since his killing Jan. 24.

“He’s my first born,” Susan Pretti said. “He’s the one that made me a mother. There was no reason he should have died that day.”

“No,” her husband said.

To the Prettis, that box of letters helps tell the true story of their son, whom they called a curious, bighearted man dedicated to his family, his nursing patients and his community in Minneapolis.

They said they had not talked politics often with their son, but they knew he was upset about the immigration crackdown that brought about 3,000 federal agents to Minnesota this winter, and knew he had joined thousands of other people in protesting the raids and arrests.

They said he had cherished his community in Minneapolis and had been aghast to see what was happening there.

“He said, ‘Mom, they’re kidnapping kids,’” Michael Pretti said, recalling a conversation. “‘Why would anybody do that? Why would people treat each other like that? That just doesn’t make any sense. There’s no reason to.’”

Trump administration officials have called their son a domestic terrorist who wanted to “massacre” law enforcement, and blamed him for inserting himself into the tense, sometimes violent immigration protests in Minneapolis while he was carrying a handgun with a valid permit.

Alex Pretti’s parents denounced the administration’s claims in the hours after his death as “sickening lies.” Videos from the scene show that Alex Pretti never drew his gun and was on his knees and had been disarmed by a federal agent a moment before he was shot.

Those videos play on painful repeat in the Prettis’ memories now, they said. Michael Pretti added that he had to mute the television and shield his eyes if they popped up on the news.

But they said the videos proved their son did not deserve to be killed on a snowy Minneapolis street that morning.

“It¶¶Òőap so clear as to what happened,” Michael Pretti said.

The parents’ lawyer, Steven Schleicher, who served as a special prosecutor in the murder trial of the Minneapolis police officer who killed George Floyd, said Tuesday that the Prettis were seeking “facts and accountability” and wanted to know the full truth about the federal agents who shot their son and exactly what happened on the street that morning.

The Prettis’ television stayed off Tuesday as top immigration officials in Washington were testifying to Congress about the administration’s deportation campaign. The officials refused to answer questions about the killings of Pretti or Renee Good.

The Prettis said they had tried to keep their focus on their son’s life, and not on the uproar touched off by his death.

“The truth is, he was an exceptionally kind, caring man,” Michael Pretti said.

The couple described themselves as a “good Midwestern family” who raised Alex and his younger sister, Micayla, in a tight-knit neighborhood in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

They ate dinner together nearly every night and made their house a destination for play dates and sleepovers. They said they had attended all of their children’s basketball games and track meets and had served as a parental taxi service for practices and trips to the mall and doughnut shops.

From an early age, they said, Alex was curious about how the world worked and what lay beneath the surface.

When Alex was 5 or 6, Susan Pretti said, she decorated his room with a fish-themed wallpaper border, and he ripped away one section. He told his mother he had just wanted to see what was behind it, she said.

He devoured books about space and science in his room, decorated with a poster of the solar system, and immersed himself in music and theater, playing the guitar and the piano and singing for years with a local boys choir.

“He always wanted to know more,” Michael Pretti said.

As he grew up, his parents said, he tried to fathom why people treated one another cruelly. He had a wide circle of friends and sometimes came home from his Catholic elementary school upset that another student had been bullied.

“There was always an underlying seriousness to him,” Susan Pretti said.

After graduating from Preble High School in 2006, he attended the University of Minnesota and quickly made Minnesota his home.

He found work as a research assistant and eventually became a nurse at the Veterans Affairs hospital in Minneapolis. He worked overnight at first and would often call his parents after an exhausting shift.

His parents said that Alex had told them about an earlier confrontation with federal agents that occurred Jan. 13. Video of that incident shows him spitting toward an agent and kicking the taillight of a vehicle before agents tackle him and briefly detain him. He appears to be carrying a handgun at his back during that incident.

The incident came up during a regular check-in with his parents, and Alex told them he had been hurt but was fine. He did not go into detail, they said, but they told him to be careful — a caution they always gave both children at the end of nearly every phone conversation.

“We really ramped up, ‘Be careful,’” Michael Pretti said, and Alex responded, “I will.”

Some critics have pointed to that earlier confrontation as evidence that Alex Pretti was aggressive. But Schleicher has responded, “Nothing that happened a full week before could possibly have justified Alex’s killing.”

They last spoke to Alex a day before his death. His garage door had broken in the subzero cold, and Michael Pretti said he had helped arrange a repair from afar. He said Alex had called Friday to report that the door was fixed and that he had tipped the repairperson $100.

When they saw the video of their son’s death, the Prettis said they saw their son’s character showing through.

“His last act on this earth, his last thought, was to help this woman,” his father said.

“It¶¶Òőap who he was, every day,” his mother said. “He’s the same Alex he always was.”

Memories of Alex have been flickering through his parents’ minds almost nonstop, they said, as they try to figure out when they can return to work and begin to plan for a private memorial service for him later this spring.

They have been thinking about how, as a boy, he would help his younger sister walk up and down the stairs. How he would call up his parents to describe his latest tweaks to his mountain bike. And as a child, how he would ask his parents, “If you could push a button” to make anything happen, what would it be?

“If we could push a button,” Michael Pretti said, “we’d have Alex back with us.”

This article originally appeared in .

The gathering was small, and it seemed dwarfed by the large room where the bill’s supporters had assembled. They’d repeatedly delayed the proposal, and tweaked its scope, amid lingering concerns from Gov. Jared Polis — who months earlier welcomed immigration authorities’ presence in the state to help arrest “dangerous criminals.”

The delayed and low-key nature of that April news conference would make for a stark contrast with the unveiling of another round of immigration legislation just 10 months later.

At that rally last week, legislators gathered outside the state Capitol to launch a package of immigration bills drafted in response to President Donald Trump’s mass-deportation agenda. The group, with lawmakers flanked by dozens of supporters and advocates, filled most of the building’s west steps and spilled onto the concrete below.

The crowd chanted “Abolish ICE!” as legislators described plans to prevent anyone who’d worked for the agency from joining a Colorado police department, while tightening rules around detention centers and allowing Coloradans injured by federal authorities to sue them.

The events’ contrasts are emblematic of the shift on immigration — in rhetoric and, to some degree, in policy — among Colorado’s majority Democrats after a year of unprecedented enforcement. While Colorado has not been visited by the quasi-militarized surges of Minneapolis or Los Angeles, the state saw more than 3,500 immigration arrests over the course of Trump’s first nine months in the White House.

Graphic footage of federal agents’ killings of people in Minneapolis and high-profile operations in Denver, Aurora, Colorado Springs, Durango and affluent parts of the high country brought the Trump administration’s immigration agenda to the doorsteps of lawmakers and the Democratic base that elected them.

Some state legislators likened the current moment to the weeks after the 2020 police killing of George Floyd, which helped unify Democratic lawmakers and spurred the passage of a marquee police oversight bill in Colorado.

Identifying a problem and agreeing on a solution is rarely a straight line in politics, and whether Democratic lawmakers’ comfort with criticizing ICE translates into full agreement on policy changes remains to be seen. Democrats nationwide are just starting to probe the scale of growing anti-ICE sentiment, and Polis, in a statement to The Denver Post, was lukewarm and “skeptical” about additional immigration measures.

Though he said he was open to the discussions, “I think we have to be mindful of what we already have on the books.”

But lawmakers here, particularly those who have long worked on immigration legislation, are preparing far-reaching measures as a response to what they’ve seen in the past 12 months. While last year they waited on negotiations with the governor, they’ve moved more swiftly this time around.

Less than three weeks before the rally, on the first day of the 2026 legislative session, the lawmakers had already introduced , which would allow Coloradans injured by immigration authorities to file lawsuits against those agents. And they were publicly describing plans for two more, both tabbed for introduction later in February, that would, among other things, further tighten laws around ICE cooperation and remind local police that they can detain federal agents during an investigation.

“Because Trump is so unpredictable, (Democratic) leadership, in general, really were wanting to take a more reserved measure on immigration” last year, said Rep. Lorena Garcia, an Adams County Democrat who sponsored the 2025 bill and is involved in this year’s package. “But we were still able to get a pretty bold bill out of here. And yet still it’s not enough.

“I would say the legislature (this year) is actually saying we have to be more aggressive in protecting Coloradans. And the community’s been calling for it.”

‘They’re not scared,’ advocate says of lawmakers

After Trump won reelection in 2024 with a campaign focused on immigration and pledges to deport millions of people without proper legal status, Democrats across the country wondered whether the party needed to toughen its position on immigration.

Spring showed majority support for ICE raids, the use of military personnel at the U.S.-Mexico border and the banning of so-called “sanctuary” policies in cities that limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities.

In Colorado at the time, some state lawmakers had privately worried that passing a bill strengthening the state’s sanctuary-like laws would only draw the ire of Trump, said Alex SĂĄnchez, the head of the high country-based Voces Unidas, an immigrant-rights group.

Those conversations are different this year, he and others said.

While Colorado Republicans have generally defended immigration enforcement — if not fully embracing how it’s being carried out — a different breeze is blowing among Democrats, from those who control the state Capitol to the candidates vying to unseat a Republican congressman in the suburbs north of Denver.

“The biggest change I’ve seen is they’re actually talking about (immigration), and they’re not scared,” Gladis Ibarra, the co-executive director of the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, said of federal and state lawmakers. “It’s not across the board. But it’s been a clear shift.”

The intensive surge of immigration authorities into several blue states, and the killing of RenĂ©e Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents in Minneapolis last month, helped swing public opinion against Trump’s immigration agenda. In his statement to The Post, Polis said the “images from the last year, especially the last few weeks, are incredibly disturbing.”

Some Colorado lawmakers pointed to public polling that has shown increasing opposition to ICE’s practices. A new nationwide found that 34% of nearly 1,200 voters interviewed in late January and early February supported how ICE was enforcing immigration laws — a 6-percentage-point drop from two weeks prior. Sixty percent said Trump’s treatment of undocumented immigrants had been too harsh.

Latinos are the largest ethic minority group in Colorado, and 40% of those polled last year said they or their communities feared being arrested by ICE. All of the poll’s respondents were U.S. citizens.

Every month has seemed to bring news of a new and controversial arrest, from a father and two children in Durango or a prominent activist in Denver to a schoolteacher in Douglas County or drivers headed to work in the high country. Nearly two-thirds of the 3,500 immigrants arrested in the state last year had no prior criminal convictions, according to ICE records obtained by .

Local advocates said they had documented ICE arrests and then broadcast what they’d found, including to lawmakers, to move the immigration crackdown from rhetoric to reality.

“Coming out of 2024, a lot of Democrats were convinced that they were just on the losing side of immigration as an issue,” said Seth Masket, a political scientist at the University of Denver. “And it was definitely the top issue mentioned by the Trump campaign, it was the main thing they ran on and he won with it.

“I think what we’ve seen — particularly over the last month, but somewhat more broadly over the last year — is just some of the consequences of the Trump administration’s crackdown, which looks more brutal than a lot of people expected.”

Facing public demands for action

The proximity of those arrests — coupled with the violent intensity of immigration authorities’ efforts in Minneapolis and elsewhere — has galvanized Democratic lawmakers.

Protests have erupted, too, further pressing elected officials to respond. Days before last week’s rally on the Capitol steps, hundreds of protesters gathered near the same spot to protest ICE.

“There is now evidence in our midst of what the federal administration is doing,” said House Speaker Julie McCluskie, a Dillon Democrat.

After an ICE operation in nearby Frisco last year, local school attendance dropped by 35%.

“What we’ve seen in this state, and what we’re seeing on a national stage, has really caused our public to step up and demand that we take action,” she said.

The Colorado Democratic Party recently released a “Know Your Rights” toolkit on its social media accounts to provide immigrants with guidance on how to interact with ICE. Masket said he couldn’t have imagined the party doing that even six months ago.

U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, Denver’s longtime congresswoman, has called for the “dismantling” of the agency. A newly progressive-leaning Aurora City Council passed a resolution opposing ICE’s “lawlessness and overreach,” less than two years after one of that council’s members helped ignite a national firestorm over a transnational Venezuelan gang.

In Denver, City Council members soon will consider a local measure that would attempt to ban ICE agents (and other officers) from wearing face coverings.

U.S. Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper — both of whom are facing contested primary elections in June, with Bennet seeking the governor’s office and Hickenlooper running for reelection — have increasingly criticized ICE. They’ve also supported Democrats’ decision to shut down the government over funding for the agency. Hickenlooper later voted for for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE.

Still, it’s unclear to what extent broad anger will help produce a coherent policy response, in Colorado and across the country. Nationally, have fretted over the calls — like those echoing from the Colorado Capitol’s stairs — to abolish ICE outright.

Two of the three expected measures in the Colorado legislature have yet to be introduced. One of them would prohibit state law enforcement officers from wearing masks and prevent any former ICE agents from becoming certified to work for Colorado agencies, said Reps. Yara Zokaie and Meg Froelich, who are set to sponsor the proposal.

The other would further expand last year’s cooperation restrictions bill — including with provisions aimed at Polis, who sought to sidestep the law last year and comply with an ICE subpoena. The measure would require the state to report ICE subpoenas it receives and state officials to alert anyone whose data may be included in the request.

The governor, also a Democrat, has taken a more neutral tone against Trump since the president returned to office last year.

But Polis has become more critical of the president’s immigration enforcement efforts: A year after he welcomed ICE to the state, Polis spent part of his final annual address to the legislature last month noting how many immigrant detainees had no criminal records, as well as listing the names of people killed and arrested by immigration authorities.

His office has also encouraged clemency applications by people convicted of nonviolent or minor crimes and who “are experiencing or fear being seized by the federal government and torn away from their families.”

Polis’ office declined an interview request for this story. In response to an emailed list of questions, Polis said his position on immigration enforcement had not changed. He told The Post that “when anyone is being investigated for a crime, whether they are here legally or illegally, we will work with anyone to apprehend and prosecute them. But unfortunately the federal government has not been targeted or transparent in how they are pursuing their enforcement activities.”

As for legislators’ plans this session, Polis said he hadn’t seen language on all of the proposals.

But he said he “would be skeptical of legislation that raises constitutional concerns or departs from the agreements reached last year.”

“I have been clear (that) I am willing to work with legislators on any issue to deliver the best policy for the state,” Polis said. “However, Colorado has some of the strongest protections across the country and I want to ensure that recent laws are being followed and fully understood and (that) new laws do not create confusion.”

Immigration a top issue in CD8 race

The changing politics of immigration have also slipped into one of the state’s most high-profile races this year.

Republican U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans won the 8th Congressional District seat in November 2024 in part by running on immigration enforcement and for supporting past legislation limiting state cooperation with ICE. Then-U.S. Rep. Yadira Caraveo on an issue that was seen then as a vulnerability for Democrats.

Last April, as the state legislature considered the bill further limiting ICE cooperation, then-Rep. Shannon Bird, a Democrat, was preparing to run against Evans. Later that month, she voted against the bill in committee and was absent for its final vote on the House floor.

Her campaign said last week that she’d missed the vote because of an ill family member. She’d voted no in committee, the campaign said, over concerns with proposed penalties that would be assessed to state or local officials who worked with ICE. Her campaign said Bird would’ve voted for the final version of the bill.

The penalty provision remained in the legislation when it passed the House and was later signed into law. Garcia and Rep. Elizabeth Velasco, the lawmakers who sponsored the bill, said Bird had not raised concerns to them last year.

“I don’t want to make assumptions about why she dodged the vote,” Garcia said last week.

Bird’s no vote and absence may have spared her attack ads from Evans. But, in another sign of how the political realities around immigration have shifted in the past year, that vote drew a caustic statement from one of her Democratic primary opponents in the 8th District, Evan Munsing.

In a statement, Bird’s campaign manager, Eve Zhurbinskiy, wrote that Bird “believes ICE is murdering people in our streets. Having violent, untrained and masked agents terrorizing our communities is unacceptable and un-American. Unlike Gabe Evans, who has voted for the Trump agenda every step of the way and enabled these attacks on law-abiding citizens, Shannon will always represent the needs of our community first — not the president.”

Evans has had to navigate his own immigration position in the swing district, which takes in northern Denver suburbs and Greeley.

He has said he wants the Trump administration to focus on immigrants with criminal records, but he also supported a Republican bill directing tens of billions of dollars in additional funding to ICE, even as more .

, Evans said he was worried about ICE officials’ assertion that the agency’s personnel can search homes with just an administrative warrant, rather than obtaining one signed by a judge. He said he looked forward to questioning Homeland Security officials during an upcoming House hearing.

But he blamed Democrats for the Minneapolis standoff and the broader impression that ICE was out of control.

“One side wants to fan the flames and equivocate in this space because they want an issue to run on in November,” he said.

He noted that ICE had stepped lightly in his district, with narrowly tailored operations aimed at criminals rather than the local industries that rely on immigrant workers.

“We have big meatpacking plants, we have big dairies, we have places where, if ICE was trying to meet a quota, you would see ICE going to them,” Evans said.

‘A failed system for decades’

Other Republicans have offered similarly mixed views on the crackdown, primarily expressing reservations with how it¶¶Òőap being carried out.

During a debate last week in the state Capitol over a resolution calling for support for the immigrant community, two Republican lawmakers addressed their constituents in Spanish and spoke of the value of immigrants. Rep. Ryan Gonzalez, of Greeley, said he supported a humane immigration system — but, echoing Evans, he said the resolution was divisive and polarizing, and he and every other Republican voted against it.

Rep. Matt Soper, a Delta Republican whose wife became a U.S. citizen last week, said in an interview that he was troubled that asylum-seekers and others without full legal status were being deported, in some instances, to countries other than those where they’re from.

But he wanted the federal government to enforce the country’s immigration laws, he said. He supported what Trump was doing, he said, even if he wished “he could be nicer about it.” He saw little chance that his caucus would support Democrats’ immigration proposals.

Senate Minority Leader Cleave Simpson said he was concerned by the October arrests of a father and two children in Durango, which was followed by an ICE agent throwing a protester to the ground. He said he’d reached out to Republican U.S. Rep. Jeff Hurd, whose district includes Durango.

“It’s just has caused me to think more deeply about federal immigration and the recognition that it¶¶Òőap been largely a failed system for decades,” he said, adding that he didn’t think mass deportations were the answer to that failure.

Still, he said, he wanted Democrats to acknowledge that there are “bad actors” who’ve entered the country without legal status. In his view, the state should cooperate with ICE, which in turn would help the agency focus on arresting people with criminal histories while reducing the likelihood of violent encounters between federal officers and the public.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

The tooth imprint on Marina Placensia’s lower lip suggests that her lip was pressed into the tooth with a significant amount of force as she was suffocated, testified Bill Smock, a physician with the Louisville Metro Police Department in Kentucky and expert in strangulation who also testified in the George Floyd case.

“Ms. Placensia was suffocated to death,” Smock testified. “She died because she couldn’t breathe. Period. This is homicide. Death at the hands of someone else. Literally the hands of someone else.”

Smock took the stand at the start of the second week of the jury trial for Angelo Mantych, 43, who is charged with first-degree murder in Placensia’s death. Placensia died in her seat on an overnight Amtrak train to Denver on Sept. 1, 2016.

Mantych told officers he tried to wake his girlfriend about 20 minutes before they arrived in Denver, and assumed she was sleeping deeply when she did not stir. He said he tried again 10 minutes before arrival and then sought help when she still did not respond, according to an affidavit.

The Denver Office of the Medical Examiner could not determine her cause of death in 2016, and Mantych was not arrested until 2023, after Smock, brought in as an outside expert, reviewed the case and concluded that Placensia was suffocated to death.

A woman died in her seat on an overnight train to Denver. Nine years later, her boyfriend is on trial for murder.

Prosecutors allege that Mantych silently smothered his partner to death in the dark train car. Mantych's attorneys say she died of natural causes, and said authorities blamed her death on Mantych only because of his long history of domestic violence against Placensia.

When she died, Placensia had more than 35 separate injuries that indicated ongoing physical abuse -- including significant internal bleeding from a recent blow to her lower back, Smock testified. Her family said she planned to leave Mantych after she and her children arrived in Denver on the train from Wisconsin.

One of the couple's children testified Monday that Mantych beat Placensia "almost daily" when the family lived in Wisconsin and that he was often violent and drunk. The teenager described an incident in which his father hit his mother with a chair, breaking it into pieces, but said he did not see any fighting between them on the train before Placensia died.

Smock pointed to bleeding in Placensia's gums as another indication that she was suffocated. He testified that a person typically loses consciousness within 90 seconds after their air supply is cut off, and that during that time frame, the suffocated person will struggle to breathe and will be unable to scream, speak or cry out, he testified.

"As seconds go by and you have less oxygen, you are going to become weaker and weaker and less clear," he said. He noted that Placensia's bra was pulled up over her breasts when first responders started CPR, which he said indicated a struggle.

Smock reiterated his stance during cross-examination as Mantych's attorneys sought to undermine his expertise, and he rejected their arguments that Placensia could have died from liver disease, heart conditions or alcohol withdrawal.

"She did not die of natural causes," Smock testified.

Her boyfriend, Angelo Mantych, frantically alerted train staff that she was unresponsive just after the train pulled into Union Station at 7:12 a.m. on Sept. 1, 2016. The train’s assistant conductor, Joseph Benjamin, found Placensia slumped over in her seat, her bra above her breasts, not breathing. She was warm to the touch, and she wasn’t stiff.

But when Benjamin performed CPR, Placensia’s breath carried the unmistakable stale stench of death, he testified Tuesday at the start of the jury trial for Mantych, who was charged with his girlfriend’s murder seven years after her death.

The Denver Office of the Medical Examiner could not determine Placensia’s cause of death — she had 35 separate injuries to her body, including cuts and bruises, which witnesses and family members attributed to longstanding physical abuse from Mantych, now 43. None were serious enough to cause her death. She had advanced liver disease from alcohol abuse, but the medical examiner couldn’t point to that as her cause of death either.

The case went cold until 2023, when the lead detective left the Denver Police Department and joined the Denver District Attorney’s Office. He revived the investigation and sent Placensia’s case to , a physician with the Louisville Metro Police Department in Kentucky, who in the George Floyd case, for a second look.

Smock concluded she was smothered to death.

Prosecutors believe Mantych silently asphyxiated his partner at some point during the night in the dark train car. Defense attorneys argued she died of natural causes. None of the passengers or staff in the train car that night saw a confrontation between the couple, public defender Srinija Pernankil said during opening statements Tuesday.

“Not a single witness… heard fighting, arguing, struggling,” she told jurors in Denver District Court. “You will not hear from a single witness who saw or heard a conflict.”

Even Placensia’s four children, who were with the couple on the train, did not report a confrontation that night, Pernankil said. The prosecution’s expert witness, she said, came into the case years after the autopsy, looked at some photos and told prosecutors what they wanted to hear.

But Assistant District Attorney Lara Mullin said Smock saw what Denver’s autopsy missed: telltale signs of smothering. Investigators sent Smock photos of Placensia’s autopsy, the autopsy report, witness statements and scene photographs.

“What he saw immediately stood out,” Mullin said. “Injuries to the oral and perioral area of her mouth. Hemorrhaging inside her lips. Bruising on her jawline and face. What did these injuries say to Dr. Smock? It suggested this: smothering.”

Smock is expected to testify during the jury trial.

Denver investigators documented years of domestic violence between Mantych and Placensia ahead of the fatal train trip in a .  Witnesses described Mantych beating Placensia, slapping her, giving her black eyes. They remembered that she wore long sleeves even in warm weather to cover up the injuries.

Placensia was planning to leave him once she arrived in Denver, one family member said, according to the affidavit. But Mantych had threatened to kill her if she ever tried.

Pernankil said her client was “not a perfect father, not a perfect husband,” but that his past domestic violence should not lead jurors to assume he killed Placensia on the train. Placensia suffered from severe liver disease and heart conditions that, coupled with her history of alcohol abuse, could have caused her death, Pernankil argued during opening statements.

Mantych told officers he tried to wake his girlfriend about 20 minutes before they arrived in Denver, and assumed she was sleeping deeply when she did not stir. He said he tried again 10 minutes before arrival and then sought help when she still did not respond, according to an affidavit.

Pernankil accused authorities of pursuing the case against Mantych in large part because .

“They convinced themselves he must be the cause of Ms. Placensia’s death,” she told jurors. “…In the search for answers and the search for closure, the truth and the law should not be forgotten.”

The trial is scheduled to last through Dec. 15.

The payouts, approved Tuesday in a block vote, are for plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court by the Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer law firm in 2022. The council approved a $1.06 million settlement in the same case, involving different plaintiffs, last month.

In , the five plaintiffs who will receive a combined $1.2 million payout are Derek Buranen, Gareth Doskey, Jack Girard, Robert Greer and Kevin Kreeger. The amounts to $300,000 and goes to Jazmine Bjelland.

The plaintiffs alleged in the lawsuit that police used excessive force and violated their constitutional rights by deploying tear gas, chemical irritants, projectiles, grenades and pepper spray. The case is one of many the city has faced over police conduct in the 2020 protests.

The payout will settle a 2022 lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court by the Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer law firm. The agreement was approved in a block vote.

Some of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit claimed that the city’s crowd-control policies violated their First and Fourth Amendment rights. Others alleged that they experienced excessive force used by police during the protests.

Neither attorneys for the plaintiffs nor city representatives immediately responded to a request for comment on Monday ahead of the council vote.

During the protests that bubbled up nationwide after the 2020 murder of Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police, law enforcement in Denver used less-lethal weapons such as tear gas and chemical irritants, various projectiles, grenades and pepper spray, which the lawsuit said constituted excessive force.

As a result, the lawsuit said plaintiffs suffered physical and mental injuries, including burns, lost vision and symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

“They want to participate in demonstrations against police brutality in the City without fear that law enforcement agents working on behalf of the City will endanger their physical safety and freedom of expression with the unjustified and indiscriminate use of ‘less-lethal’ weapons,” the lawsuit read. “Plaintiffs bring this action to seek accountability, to vindicate their constitutional rights, and to restrain local law enforcement from continuing to respond to peaceful protest with unconstitutional and indiscriminate force.”

The lawsuit had 14 plaintiffs, and Monday’s council resolution named six who were part of the new settlement: Lauren Folkerts, Joseph Gallegos, Zuri Hoskin, Huitziloxochitl Jaramillo, Debra Gehri (also known as Kelsang Virya) and Douglas Munn.

Before this payout, Denver had already approved settlements to resolve lawsuits over police actions against people protesting Floyd’s murder that amounted to nearly $15 million, as of early this year.