Pueblo Municipal Court’s practice is unprecedented and likely unconstitutional, experts say
Reprinted from The Denver Post with permission
By SAM TABACHNIK | stabachnik@denverpost.com | The Denver Post and SHELLY BRADBURY | sbradbury@denverpost.com | The Denver Post
PUEBLO — By the time Gilbert Thomas appeared in Pueblo Municipal Court, he’d lost control of his life.
The 37-year-old lived on the streets, addicted to drugs and broke. He faced dozens of city charges that stemmed from being unhoused.mLoitering. Curfew violations for sleeping in city parks. Trespassing. Possessing drug paraphernalia. Resisting arrest. Interfering with police. Thefts from stores. Missed court hearings.
“I didn’t hurt nobody,” Thomas said. “I didn’t break no windows. I didn’t damage no property.”
Thomas needed help. He got jail — and lots of it. Only two of the municipal offenses Thomas faced can typically be punished with jail time under Pueblo’s city code — the others carry only fines. But a Pueblo Municipal Court judge in September sentenced Thomas to 660 days in jail, extending his sentence on the underlying charges by 32% — a full seven months — through an unusual legal avenue that Pueblo’s city officials have uniquely wielded to punish defendants who miss court appearances: contempt of court.
Pueblo’s municipal court judges regularly used contempt charges to inflate sentences for defendants who otherwise faced little to no jail time on minor city offenses like loitering, trespassing and shoplifting, a Denver Post investigation found. Pueblo city judges sent people to jail for months on charges that in other Colorado courts are punished by one or two days in jail, if that, experts said.
Pueblo’s standard policy has been to bring contempt of court charges — both a judicial power and, in Pueblo, a city crime — each time a defendant fails to attend a court hearing. Those contempt charges each carry up to a year in jail and a fine. In Pueblo, they’ve often been stacked on top of each other, leading to soaring jail sentences and thousands of dollars in fines. The practice is unprecedented in Colorado’s major cities and likely unconstitutional, experts told The Post.
“What is happening should shock all of us as residents of Colorado,” said Emma Mclean-Riggs, a senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado. “These are draconian punishments for missing court dates.”
One man who faced 10 loitering, trespassing and failure to appear charges was sentenced in February to 169 days on the underlying charges, plus 330 days in jail on 16 contempt counts — a 16-month sentence, with 66% of it due to contempt of court.
Another man with dozens of the same three charges was sentenced in December to more than 18 months in jail, with 130 days on contempt convictions alone. A woman cited for the unlawful sale of tobacco was sentenced in May to 45 days in jail — entirely for contempt of court.
Pueblo Municipal Court officials issued more than 1,700 contempt charges over an eight-month span between September and May, The Post found. Across Colorado’s 12 most populous cities, no other city issued more than three dozen municipal contempt citations in that timeframe. The longest sentence in any contempt case among those cities: 30 days in jail.
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