What Happens at a Denver Preliminary Hearing After Felony Arrest
June 19, 2026
A juvenile criminal record in Colorado can follow your child into adulthood, creating barriers to employment, housing, college admissions, and military service that many families do not anticipate. Colorado law provides a path to clear many juvenile records, but the process requires meeting specific eligibility criteria and often filing a formal petition with the court. The Law Office of Jacob Martinez helps families across Denver and Colorado protect their children’s futures through juvenile defense and record sealing.
How a Juvenile[...]Expungement is a legal process allowing individuals to have certain criminal records sealed or erased, providing them a fresh start and removing barriers to employment, housing, and other opportunities. In Colorado, the process of expungement is specific and requires a thorough understanding of the eligibility criteria, the steps involved, and the potential benefits.
How Does Colorado Expungement Work?Expungement is different from record sealing, which is the process of legally sealing a criminal record from public view. However, sealed records [...]
Dealing with inaccuracies or discrepancies in criminal records can pose significant challenges for individuals in Denver, impacting their employment opportunities, housing options, and overall quality of life. Record sealing and expungement are legal processes that offer solutions to address these issues, but understanding the differences between the two is essential for making informed decisions. This blog’ll explore the distinctions between record sealing and expungement in Denver, offer practical advice and legal strategies for challenging erroneous information, and discuss the importance [...]
The weight of past legal records can cast a long shadow, making it challenging to move forward and seize new opportunities. In Colorado, however, individuals burdened with multiple records have a pathway to reclaim their lives and rewrite their narratives. Expungement offers a chance for a clean slate, allowing people to shed the shackles of their past mistakes and forge ahead toward a brighter future. individuals aiming to reclaim their lives.
Understanding Expungement: A Fresh StartExpungement serves as a [...]
Even in states like Colorado that have decriminalized many drugs in specific amounts, drug convictions can haunt you for years.
Whenever anyone does a background check on you for a new job, housing, or even a loan, they will see convictions on your record, and you could lose opportunities long after you’ve served your debt to society. That’s why criminal record sealing exists in Colorado, but it’s essential to understand what types of convictions can be sealed and cannot.
Here [...]
A preliminary hearing in a felony case in Colorado is one of the earliest opportunities for the prosecution’s evidence to be tested before a judge. It happens after charges have been filed and the defendant has made an initial appearance, but before the case moves into trial court. The hearing is not about deciding guilt or innocence. Instead, the court is checking whether the prosecution has sufficient evidence to move the case forward.
In Colorado, this stage is often [...]
Only one drug felony level in Colorado carries a true mandatory prison sentence. The other three carry presumptive ranges where a judge still has discretion, meaning the defense strategy in a DF2, DF3, or DF4 case looks completely different from that in a DF1 case. At the Law Office of Jacob Martinez, our Denver drug crimes attorney has spent more than a decade in Denver courts, working to achieve better outcomes for clients facing felony drug charges.
Only One Drug[...]Yes. Dash cam footage from police vehicles and your own camera can be used to challenge DUI charges in Colorado. The question is not whether it is relevant but whether you know how to obtain it, how Colorado courts evaluate it, and what a defense attorney actually does with it. The Law Office of Jacob E. Martinez has defended DUI cases throughout Denver and surrounding Colorado courts for more than 15 years.
What Colorado Police Dash Cams Actually Record at[...]