Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty, a Democrat, and Mesa County District Attorney Dan Rubinstein, a Republican, called the commutation “unprecedented, premature and unwarranted” in a Jan. 20 letter to Polis obtained by The Denver Post on Tuesday through an open records request.

The prosecutors said the governor’s decision to reduce Rogel Aguilera-Mederos’ 110-year sentence to 10 years while the trucker’s case was still pending in the courts “undercut the community’s trust” in the justice system and has impacted plea-bargain negotiations in some cases.

“Your decision is having a substantial ripple effect,” the district attorneys wrote.

In a recent Boulder County case, they said, prosecutors extended a plea offer of eight years in prison to a person who sexually assaulted a girl. The defense attorney in that case argued the sentence was excessive in light of Aguilera-Mederos’ reduced prison term, the letter said.

“Sentences should be influenced by the facts and circumstances, not by petitions, online surveys or tweets,” the letter said.

The two district attorneys sent the letter to Polis the day before the governor was scheduled to meet with the board of the Colorado District Attorneys’ Council. The letter was intended to allow Polis to prepare to address their concerns, Dougherty said.

“The governor wanted to clear the air and acknowledged that his action was unprecedented,” Dougherty said of the meeting. “DA Rubinstein and I are optimistic that our concerns were understood and that what happened in that case was an exception.”

Conor Cahill, a spokesman for Polis, called Aguilera-Mederos’ 110-year prison sentence “bizarre” and said Polis acted quickly because “there was clearly an urgency to remedy this sentence and restore confidence in the uniformity and fairness of our criminal justice system.”

Both Dougherty and Rubinstein said in the letter that the 110-year prison sentence was excessive, but argued that Polis should have waited for a judge to reduce his sentence — a process that was underway — before acting.

Aguilera-Mederos’ mandatory minimum sentence drew widespread outrage after it was imposed in December, with more than 5 million people signing an online petition that asked it be reduced.

Polis’ decision to commute the sentence days before the judge overseeing Aguilera-Mederos’ case was scheduled to consider reducing the prison term drew rebukes from the judge and from family members of people who died in the April 25, 2019, crash on Interstate 70 in Lakewood.

Recently, demands for criminal sentencing reform have been front-and-center in Colorado. Consider two cases that have captured widespread media attention.

First, the case of Rogel Aguilera-Mederos, the truck driver who recklessly drove and then crashed his truck into traffic on I-70, killing four people and injuring others. While the court was actively moving to adjust the original sentence imposed based on the mandatory consecutive sentencing laws, Gov. Jared Polis commuted the sentence and lowered it to 10 years in state prison.

That same week, Kenneth Lee was arrested and charged with sexual assault on a child and first-degree burglary. Many questioned the timing of his prior release from state prison. Just seven years ago, a judge sentenced Lee to 23 years in prison for kidnapping and 6 years to life for sexual assault on another child.

Putting aside one’s view of these outcomes, we must recognize these two cases reflect fundamental issues in Colorado’s sentencing laws, and their inherent impact on public safety and community trust.

Thankfully, Colorado is addressing sentencing reform in a comprehensive, bipartisan manner with the input of numerous stakeholders: prosecutors, defense attorneys, law enforcement, probation officers, mental health professionals, prior offenders, victims and legislators from both parties, among others. It is overdue.

Colorado has not systematically reviewed its sentencing laws since 1985. Since then, our sentencing statutes have become inconsistent, difficult to understand and misaligned. In June 2020, Gov. Polis directed a comprehensive review of our sentencing laws to ensure that our sentencing scheme is rational, just, equitable, and consistent. That work is underway.

We serve as co-chairs of the Sentencing Reform Task Force which, along with the Colorado Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice, is engaging in data-driven analysis and constructive efforts to improve our sentencing laws. The task force already has conducted a thorough examination of Colorado’s misdemeanor statutes, reviewing approximately 1,000 criminal offenses and conducting a
comparative state-by-state review of misdemeanor sentencing ranges, which revealed that Colorado’s misdemeanor sentencing range was high compared with nearly every other state.

That work led to the Task Force helping to produce Senate Bill 21-271, which the Legislature passed last session. This bill, which goes into effect this March, overhauled Colorado’s misdemeanor sentencing laws.  With overwhelming and bipartisan support, SB 271 adjusts the sentencing ranges for misdemeanors, eliminates redundant offenses, and reclassifies some offenses.  To build more certainty into the system, SB 271 also requires all county jails to utilize a standard, consistent measure for determining time served, and eliminate the inconsistencies that varied by county.

There is much more work to do. The Task Force is examining felony sentencing, the length and purpose of probation/parole, and the amount of time offenders actually serve. Our work includes evaluating laws that produced the outcomes in the Aguilera-Mederos and Lee cases. Although Task Force members represent many different aspects of the justice system, we all recognize that successful,
lasting change comes from collaborative, united efforts to improve our justice system.

Sentencing reform requires us to move forward – not backward – and that can be a difficult process. Those who argue to protect the status quo or push for the failed practices of yesteryear are failing public safety, as reflected by our unacceptable rate of recidivism. We invite those engaged in finger-pointing to join our efforts, rather than just using egregious cases to facilitate their own political ambitions – while allowing Colorado to fail. Justice demands better.

Michael Dougherty is the district attorney for the 20th Judicial District (Boulder County). Rick Kornfeld is a criminal defense attorney in private practice in Denver, and a Member of the Colorado Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice.

The judge who presided over the trial of truck driver Rogel Aguilera-Mederos on Tuesday took Gov. Jared Polis to task for the way in which he reduced the man’s 110-year prison sentence to just 10 years.

District Court Judge Bruce Jones wrote in an order, obtained by The Denver Post on Wednesday, that he learned of the commutation through news reports.

Aguilera-Mederos had been set for a resentencing hearing in mid-January in which Jones was expected to reduce the truck driver’s 110-year prison sentence. But the governor’s unusually speedy commutation upended that process.

“The court respects the authority of the Governor to do so,” Jones wrote of the sentence reduction. “Based on the timing of the decision, however, it appears this respect is not mutual.”

Aguilera-Mederos was convicted of more than two dozen crimes after he lost his brakes in Colorado’s high country in 2019 and drove his semitrailer into stopped traffic under an overpass in Lakewood, killing four people.

At sentencing last month, Jones was compelled by the state’s mandatory minimum sentencing laws to send Aguilera-Mederos to prison for 110 years. The lengthy sentence — twice that received by some Colorado murderers — provoked widespread outrage. More than 5 million people signed an online petition asking Polis to commute the sentence.

Amid the backlash, First Judicial District Attorney Alexis King requested a resentencing hearing for Aguilera-Mederos, an unusual move given her office pursued the charges that ensured he would spend decades in prison if convicted. She said at the time she would seek a 20- to 30-year sentence for Aguilera-Mederos, and later called Polis’ commutation premature.

That resentencing hearing was set for Jan. 13, but Jones canceled it in Tuesday’s order.

Duane Bailey, whose brother William Bailey died in the crash, said Wednesday that family of the victims met with Polis before the commutation and asked him not to intervene.

“We thought the governor should stay out if it,” Bailey said. “We thought the governor was too impatient. He only had to wait two weeks; he should have let the process play out.”

While Bailey thought 110 years was too long a prison sentence, he and other family members supported a 20- to 30-year prison sentence for Aguilera-Mederos, Bailey said.

In a letter announcing the commutation, Polis wrote that he was reducing the trucker’s sentence to 10 years because the longer prison term was not an appropriate punishment for Aguilera-Mederos’ actions. Polis wrote that he did not want to wait.

“There is an urgency to remedy this unjust sentence and restore confidence in the uniformity and fairness of our criminal justice system, and consequently I have chosen to commute your sentence now,” the letter read.

Bailey said the governor caved to political pressure.

“We think,” he said, “he short-circuited the process of the judicial system that he said he was trying to restore faith in.”

District Court Judge Bruce Jones scheduled a hearing for January 13 to reconsider 26-year-old Rogel Aguilera-Mederos’ prison term, a lengthy mandatory minimum sentence that raised widespread outrage. In the two weeks since the sentencing, nearly calling for the prison term to be shortened, and Gov. Jared Polis said he would expedite consideration of Aguilera-Mederos’ petition for clemency.

When Jones imposed the 110-year sentence on Dec. 13, he said was doing so only because he was compelled to by law, and suggested he was open to reducing the prison term through a future hearing.

In an unusual move, that resentencing hearing was requested by First Judicial District Attorney Alexis King, who pursued the charges that ensured Aguilera-Mederos would spend decades in prison if convicted. Jones on Monday said the prosecution’s request was without precedent — such hearings are usually called for by the defense or the judge.

“The people have done things under this statute that I don’t see any precedent for,” he said. He asked both sides to research and submit to the court the proper procedure and scope for the re-sentencing hearing by January 10.

Jones said family members of those killed in the crash are welcome to speak at the resentencing hearing, but do not have to do so. He noted how difficult the first sentencing was for many of the victims.

“I don’t want to put anybody through that again,” he said. “I don’t want to put myself through that again. But I will hear them out if they want to speak to me. But they don’t have to do that.”

Jones also said he doesn’t want January’s hearing to become a “circus,” and said outbursts from anyone would result in immediate removal from the courtroom.

During Monday’s hearing, King told the judge she recommended a new sentence of between 20 and 30 years for Aguilera-Mederos, a stance she took publicly last week. The trucker’s defense attorney, James Colgan, said last week he believes Aguilera-Mederos should walk free immediately.

“This is an exceptional case, and it requires an exceptional process,” King said Monday. She declined to answer questions from reporters; a spokesman cited the ongoing case as the reason she refused to take any questions.

Aguilera-Mederos was hauling a full load of lumber from Wyoming to Texas when he crashed under an overpass in Lakewood on April 25, 2019, killing four people and injuring others. A jury convicted him of 27 charges in October, including 16 counts of first-degree assault and attempted assault, which carry mandatory consecutive sentences under Colorado law.

The inexperienced trucker was seen driving recklessly hours before the crash, prosecutors said during his trial. A couple reported that a truck hauling lumber with Texas plates sped by them in a no-passing zone in Rand and nearly ran them off the road that day. Aguilera-Mederos also passed at least one runaway truck ramp after he lost his brakes. The trucker realized he had a problem with his brakes after coming over Berthoud Pass, prosecutors said, but decided to keep driving anyway.

Aguilera-Mederos has maintained that the crash was an unavoidable accident and argued during trial that he was overwhelmed by circumstances outside of his control.

King, a first-term Democrat, said in a news release Friday evening that “the facts of this case and input from the victims and their families” compels her to request a new sentence of 20 to 30 years, instead of the longer prison term her office sought by filing charges that carried mandatory consecutive sentences.

“As the jury found, Mr. Aguilera-Mederos knowingly made multiple active choices that resulted in the death of four people, serious injuries to others, and mass destruction. This sentencing range reflects an appropriate outcome for that conduct, which was not an accident. Given that the victims in this case have more than one view of an appropriate outcome, and this trial court heard the evidence presented, we believe that this hearing is the best path to securing justice for everyone involved,” King said in a statement.

This announcement follows an international backlash to the length of the initial sentence, as well as to the fact that prosecutors in King’s office celebrated with a trophy after Aguilera-Mederos was convicted. Millions have signed online petitions and Gov. Jared Polis, who has met with the families of those who died in the 2019 highway crash, has said he’ll give an expedited review of a clemency application for Aguilera-Mederos.

James Colgan, attorney for Aguilera-Mederos, told The Denver Post he met Thursday with King, who tried to convince the defense to get on board with a new sentence of 20 to 30 years.

“We said no, we aren’t doing it,” he said. “Our position is he should be released.”

Colgan added, “This is also disingenuous. She claims that what is a just sentence is 20 to 30 years. Well, she knew the way the case was charged there was no way she could get a sentence of 20 to 30 years. … The only reason she’s saying this now is because of all the political heat that she’s taking. I just think it’s atrocious and an abuse of her discretion to say, ‘Well, we really thought all along a 30-year sentence was appropriate.’ They were OK with 110 years 10 days ago.”

Victims and family members said at the sentencing hearing last week that they believed Aguilera-Mederos deserved some time in prison. Duane Bailey, brother of Willliam Bailey, one of the four people who died, said the trucker deserved at least 20 years in prison, but that he did not deserve to die incarcerated.

“He made a deliberate and intentional decision that his life was more important than everyone else on the road that day,” Bailey told the judge.

On Wednesday, Democratic Latino state lawmakers rallied with others at the Capitol in protest of the sentence, which is in part a product of Colorado’s mandatory sentencing laws.

Colgan had argued at the Dec. 13 sentencing that case law should have allowed the judge, Bruce Jones, to find a mandatory minimum sentence of 20 years. Jones did not make that finding himself, but he did say from the bench that he did not feel the 110 years was an appropriate punishment.

“(I)f I had the discretion, it would not be my sentence,” he said.

Though Jones was required by Colorado’s mandatory minimums to sentence Aguilera-Mederos to 110 years based on the jury’s conviction, state law does provide a process under which he can go back and reduce the sentence under certain circumstances.

Rogel Aguilera-Mederos, 26, was sentenced to a mandatory minimum of 110 years in prison after he was convicted of 27 crimes after he lost his brakes while driving a semitrailer on Interstate 70 in Colorado’s high country in 2019. Aguilera-Mederos passed by a runaway truck ramp designed to stop out-of-control semis and instead crashed into stopped traffic in Lakewood, killing four people in a fiery 28-car pileup.

Read the full story here.

“This type of injustice has to stop,” said Leonard Martinez, an attorney for the trucker’s family. “It has to stop at every level. It starts with legislation, it starts with the district attorney’s offices and it starts with our judges. We cannot stop until this system has been changed.”

Rogel Aguilera-Mederos, 26, was sentenced to a mandatory minimum of 110 years in prison after he was convicted of 27 crimes after he lost his brakes while driving a semitrailer on Interstate 70 in Colorado’s high country in 2019. Aguilera-Mederos passed by a runaway truck ramp designed to stop out-of-control semis and instead crashed into stopped traffic in Lakewood, killing four people in a fiery 28-car pileup.

The 110-year sentence drew immediate criticism, and calls for clemency have spread nationwide in the nine days since the sentencing.

“I want to see my son, I want to see my son,” Oslaida Mederos, the trucker’s mother, said in Spanish through sobs during Wednesday’s rally.

She and others emphasized that Aguilera-Mederos was not using alcohol or drugs at the time of the crash. Prosecutors said he was driving recklessly fast hours before the crash, and chose to keep driving in Colorado’s mountains despite knowing the truck had a problem with its brakes.

The crash killed 24-year-old Miguel Angel Lamas Arellano, 67-year-old William Bailey, 61-year-old Doyle Harrison and 69-year-old Stanley Politano. Relatives of victims supported at least some prison time at his sentencing hearing.

Bailey’s wife, Gage Evans,  the driver’s sentence shouldn’t be commuted but said lawmakers should instead examine the sentencing laws.

“This person should spend some time in prison and think about his actions,” Evans said, adding she and other victims’ relatives object to a “public narrative” that Aguilera-Mederos is a victim. “We are truly the victims,” she said.

More than 4.6 million people have signed calling for Gov. Jared Polis to commute Aguilera-Mederos’s sentence, and two separate processes are underway that could end with a sentence reduction.

The first process was requested Friday by First Judicial District Attorney Alexis King, whose office pursued the charges that ensured convictions would lead to Aguilera-Mederos spending decades in prison. She asked for a court hearing in which District Court Judge Bruce Jones can reconsider Aguilera-Mederos’s sentence. Jones, who previously indicated he was open to reducing the sentence, set a hearing Monday to discuss the prosecution’s request.

“We understand and appreciate the frustration of those seeking immediate consideration and ask for patience as we take the steps allowed by law before the judge who knows this case and the community that was impacted,” King said in a statement Wednesday. Under state law, any sentence reduction obtained through that process can’t take effect until 119 days after a defendant enters prison.

The second, separate process underway is the request that Polis commute part or all of Aguilera-Mederos’s sentence. The trucker submitted an application for clemency Monday, his defense attorney James Colgan said, and the governor’s office said it would expedite a review of his request.

Under Colorado law, Polis must wait at least 14 days after receiving a request for clemency to act on it. He is obligated to reach out to the judge and district attorney who handled the applicant¶¶Ňőap trial and sentencing, seek their feedback on the clemency request and give them at least 14 days to comment on it.

After that two-week period is up, Polis can act on a petition – or not.

Requests for clemency usually go through the state’s Executive Clemency Advisory Board, which then makes recommendations to the governor on whether to grant requests. People seeking clemency typically exhaust all other legal avenues in the court system before approaching the governor, but there are exceptions.

Attorney Hollynd Hoskins, who helped secure clemency for Curtis Brooks years after he was sentenced to life in prison when he was 17, said there were still pending judicial remedies in that case when he sought relief, but that the governor granted a waiver to allow the clemency petition to go ahead.

That process in Brooks’ case took close to a year, she said, and there were a litany of requirements people had to meet to be eligible to apply for clemency — like having served at least 10 years in prison or one third of their sentences. But the governor had the power to carve out exceptions in unusual circumstances, she said.

“That¶¶Ňőap extraordinarily fast,” she said of Aguilera-Mederos’s petition for clemency. “However, in my opinion from reading what is in the public record, these are unique and extraordinary circumstances, and this sentence appears to be unjust and completely disparate based upon the facts of the case, and I don’t think there is anyone disputing that.”

At Wednesday’s rally, organizers and attendees said they wanted to keep pressure on both the governor and the district attorney to reduce the sentence one way or the other. They also called for wider reforms of the criminal justice system and for getting rid of Colorado’s mandatory minimum sentencing laws.

“I came here not only for this case but for the broader point: the judges should be able to do what they feel they need to do to dispense justice in the best interest of the case,” said Diego Graziano, who heard about Aguilera-Mederos for the first time Wednesday morning and immediately decided to drive in from Colorado Springs to attend the day’s rally.

He spoke of Aguilera-Mederos’ apparent lack of intent to harm others.

“I can’t imagine doing 110 years for something that could’ve happened to anybody,” he said. “It could have been me.”

State Sen. Julie Gonzales, D-Denver, put the focus on all people awaiting clemency decisions during a brief speech at the rally.

“I want to acknowledge there are dozens, if not more, people with pending applications for clemency before the governor right now,” she said. “So while we call for justice for Rogel, let us also remind ourselves there are other people seeking justice as well.”

Reporter Tayler Shaw and The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

First Judicial District Attorney Alexis King quietly moved to reduce the 110-year sentence for the truck driver who killed four people on Interstate 70, just four days after a judge laid down the prison term in the 2019 crash.

King started the process to potentially reduce Rogel Aguilera-Mederos’s sentence Friday — an abrupt about-face for her office, which pursued the charges that ensured he would go to prison for decades if convicted.

She did not announce the move until Tuesday, as an online petition calling for a sentence reduction swelled to more than 4.5 million signatures and Gov. Jared Polis said he would expedite consideration of a petition for clemency from the truck driver.

King filed a request with the court for a hearing in which District Court Judge Bruce Jones can by law reconsider the mandatory minimum sentence for Aguilera-Mederos. Under the state’s mandatory minimum sentencing laws, Jones can reconsider a sentence in “unusual and extenuating circumstances” after receiving a report from the Department of Corrections about Aguilera-Mederos.

Jones said when he sentenced Aguilera-Mederos last week that he had no discretion to lay down a different prison term, but that he would if he could. He indicated he’d be willing to reconsider the sentence through the process detailed in state law.

On Tuesday, Jones scheduled a hearing in the case for Monday to discuss King’s request and whether she made it too quickly. The law says that a sentence modification can’t take effect until at least 119 days after a defendant enters prison.

The Department of Corrections must submit its report on Aguilera-Mederos within 91 days of taking him into custody, but King said in court filings that the prison system’s report may be done as soon as Thursday. King’s request asks that the hearing be set “as soon as practicable upon the receipt of the report.”

King said in a motion that her office is talking with the victims in the case to see where they stand on a sentence reduction and will provide that information to Jones once it¶¶Ňőap been gathered.

During Aguilera-Mederos’s sentencing last week, many of the victims who spoke said they believed Aguilera-Mederos should spend time in prison. One family member of a man who died said he did not wish to see Aguilera-Mederos spend the rest of his life in prison, but did want to see him serve at least two decades.

King’s office won convictions on 16 first-degree assault and attempted first-degree assault charges against Aguilera-Mederos. Those “crimes of violence” must be sentenced consecutively, not concurrently, under Colorado’s mandatory minimum sentencing laws, which strip decision-making from judges and give prosecutors tremendous power to determine how much prison time a defendant will face if convicted.

James Colgan, Aguilera-Mederos’s defense attorney, said Tuesday that King’s request is about “political survival.”

“It’s political scrambling,” he said. “They’re feeling a lot of heat and they want their foot off the fire as quickly as possible.”

Aguilera-Mederos submitted a petition for clemency to the governor’s office Monday, Colgan said. He added that Aguilera-Mederos does not trust the district attorney’s office to “come up with any kind of fair number.”

He declined to say what sort of sentence he’d consider appropriate. In the days since the sentencing, the case gained national attention, including from Kim Kardashian West, who in a tweet Tuesday.

Aguilera-Mederos testified during his trial that he lost his brakes in Colorado’s high country and couldn’t control his semitrailer on April 25, 2019. He passed at least one runaway truck ramp — a safety feature designed specifically to stop trucks that lose their brakes on the interstate’s mountain passes — and was seen driving recklessly fast in the hours before the crash, prosecutors said during the trial. He at one point realized he had a problem with his brakes and pulled over, but then continued driving, prosecutors said.

After losing his brakes, Aguilera-Mederos drove on the interstate’s shoulder until his path was blocked by a parked tractor-trailer under an overpass in Lakewood. At that point, Aguilera-Mederos turned his semitrailer into stopped traffic, killing four people and injuring others.

A jury in October found Aguilera-Mederos guilty on four counts of vehicular homicide, six counts of first-degree assault, 10 counts of attempted first-degree assault, four counts of careless driving causing death, two counts of vehicular assault and one count of reckless driving.

The two deputy district attorneys who prosecuted the trucker sentenced last week to 110 years in prison for causing a fatal pileup on Interstate 70 exchanged a trophy-like gift featuring a truck’s brake shoe after the guilty verdict, according to a screenshot of a Facebook post by Deputy District Attorney Kayla Wildeman.

In the undated post, which appears to have since been deleted or made private, Wildeman wrote that Senior Deputy District Attorney Trevor Moritzky, who worked the trial with her, turned a “brake shoe from a semi truck into a memento.”

An image attached to the post shows a gold plaque on an apparent brake part. The plaque includes Wildeman’s name, the case number for the trucker’s case and the phrase “I-70 Case.”

The truck driver, Rogel Aguilera-Mederos, 26, said during the trial that he lost his brakes in Colorado’s high country on April 25, 2019, and could not control the semitrailer he was driving. He ultimately crashed into stopped traffic under an overpass in Lakewood and killed four people in a fiery 28-car pileup.

First Judicial District Attorney Alexis King said in a statement Monday that the brake shoe in question was not a piece of evidence from the case. She said it is not normal for prosecutors to exchange gifts to commemorate trial victories.

“The post was in very poor taste and does not reflect the values of my administration,” the statement said. “We have addressed it internally.”

King said through a spokesman that she became aware of the memento and the Facebook post on Monday morning and “took immediate action.” She did not say what that action was.

Wildeman and Moritzky could not be reached for comment Monday. Moritzky was in June named one of three finalists to become an Adams County Court judge, but was ultimately not selected to fill the post.

Aguilera-Mederos’ defense attorney, James Colgan, on Monday said the gift was “unprofessional.”

“Lives are ruined all around and they celebrate,” he said.

“This is very disturbing,” Tristan Gorman, legislative policy coordinator for the Colorado Criminal Defense Bar, said about the post. “It obviously flies in the face of the prosecution’s ethical obligation to seek justice rather than a conviction… It¶¶Ňőap just bragging rights about a trial win, where people on both sides, their lives were either ended or forever changed. The tone of it seems almost like the prosecutor is treating it like a game she won.”

Douglas Cohen, a defense attorney and former prosecutor in the First Judicial District Attorney’s Office, said Monday that “high-fiving colleagues is common for trial lawyers on both sides of the aisle.”

“Anyone who tells you otherwise is holier than thou,” he said. “That said, the brake shoe memento shows a total lack of empathy and dishonors the role of prosecutors.”

Aguilera-Mederos’s 110-year mandatory minimum sentence has been widely criticized since he was sentenced last week, with more than signing an online petition asking that Gov. Jared Polis commute the sentence.

Conor Cahill, a spokesman for Polis, said in a statement Monday that the office would “expedite consideration” of a clemency application from Aguilera-Mederos, but that the truck driver has not yet submitted a request.

King said last week that she would “welcome” a reconsideration of Aguilera-Mederos’ sentence, despite her office prosecuting the charges that ensured that 110-year sentence.

Aguilera-Mederos’ sentence stretched to more than a century because, under Colorado law, first-degree assault and attempted first-degree assault are so-called “crimes of violence” in which prison sentences must run consecutively, and not concurrently, when they spring from the same incident.

Cohen said the memento should not distract from the larger issues in Aguilera-Mederos’ case.

“Why did the district attorney, who has unfettered discretion in the filing of charges, seek a century-long sentence for a tragic accident?” he said. “It’s a fair question that the legal community and community at large is asking.”

A to the sentence given to the truck driver who caused a deadly crash on Interstate 70 in April 2019 is set to take place Monday morning.

A Facebook event has been set up for a downtown march at 10 a.m. in support of Rogel Aguilera-Mederos, who was sentenced to 110 years in prison on Dec. 13. A jury found him guilty on 42 counts, including vehicular homicide, first-degree assault, attempted first-degree assault, vehicular assault, reckless driving and careless driving.

Similarly, a change.org petition Gov. Jared Polis to grant clemency to Aguilera-Mederos has been signed nearly 4.5 million times.

The Facebook group says they are not trying to take away from the families of the four people who were killed in the fiery crash.

“Let’s join together and RISE UP in support for Rogel! Let Governor Polis know the TIME doesn’t fit the “Crime”. If we do not stand up for him, who will?” the Facebook event asks. “Our goal is to bring local and national awareness so that we CAN find someone who will support Rogel in creating change in this sentencing.”

State laws forced District Court Judge Bruce Jones to lay down a minimum 110-year sentence. It stretched to more than a century because first-degree assault and attempted first-degree assault are so-called “crimes of violence” in which prison sentences must run consecutively and not concurrently when they spring from the same incident in Colorado.

The judge said he could not give a lesser term, even though that’s what he would’ve liked to do.

First Judicial District Attorney Alexis King — who pursued the convictions that led to the 110-year sentence — said in a statement that she would “welcome” a reconsideration of the prison term.