How Colorado’s Mandatory Minimum Sentences Impact Drug Crime Defense
June 1, 2026
Colorado sees a lot of car thefts in a year – and the numbers continue to climb.
This has led lawmakers to reconsider how car theft is penalized here. Currently, how much a car is worth will inform the penalty for the crime upon conviction.
However, lawmakers are now fighting to change the sentencing structure for this crime. They want to enhance the penalties related to car theft that don’t take the vehicle’s value into account. Their reasoning? This property [...]
There are all kinds of theft crimes. Shoplifting. Package theft. Identity theft. Stealing motor vehicles.
Some kinds of theft many people don’t really even think of as a crime – like using your friend’s Netflix account. What may surprise you more, though, is that the more common theft crimes don’t involve people walking into stores to take items they didn’t pay for. Instead, it’s employees who steal from their employers.
It can be tempting to take something from the workplace [...]
In the United States, control of the property you own is seen as a fundamental right. Colorado adheres to that principle, which is why the state takes theft very seriously.
It’s been reported recently that, in the first quarter of 2021, vehicle theft in Denver increased by 114 percent compared to the same time period in the previous year. This has resulted in police keeping a sharper eye out for auto theft than ever before – since the economic impact [...]
When your friend shares their Netflix account with you, your first thought probably isn’t that what you’re doing is illegal. After all, it’s just the sharing of a password on a streaming service, how bad could it be?
It turns out that sharing streaming service account information with friends and family isn’t unusual, but it is technically legal.
According to internal streaming service polls, 12 percent of people who use the streaming service aren’t paying for it and it’s costing [...]
Taking a couple of towels or a pillow from a hotel room may not seem to be a big deal. While it’s true that hotels build losses due to theft into their annual budgets, it’s still a crime to take something from one that doesn’t belong to you.
In Colorado, the penalties you may face from theft are based on the value of the property taken. Here’s what you need to know about theft in Colorado that may give you [...]
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[...]A deferred judgment and sentence allows a first-time offender in Colorado to plead guilty, complete a period of court supervision, and then have the guilty plea withdrawn and the charge dismissed permanently. For someone facing their first criminal charge, this is often the best available outcome.
At the Law Office of Jacob Martinez, our Denver criminal defense team has negotiated deferred judgment agreements in Colorado courts since 2014.
How a Deferred Judgment and Sentence Works in ColoradoThe defendant enters [...]