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: Capital Defense Weekly

This week’s edition

By Karl R. Keys, Esq.

From the intro to this week’s edition: Leading off this edition is the Colorado Supreme Court’s opinion in People v. Sir Mario Owens.  The Owens Court holds that the Colorado statute pertaining to a two year expedite unitary appeal process is a hortatory goal and not mandatory scheme. Specifically, “when properly interpreted, [the statute at bar] merely directs the supreme court to adopt rules of practice and entrusts to this court the responsibility of ensuring  the expedited presentation of the case for review. Whatever else it may mean, the failure of this court to include in its rules an inflexible two-year time limit on any aspect of the unitary review process means that no such practice limit exists. The district court therefore misconstrued [the statute] as [ ] imposing an absolute two-year time limit and erred in finding a direct conflict in this regard between statute and rule...continue to full post

Full post as published by Capital Defense Weekly on April 20, 2010 (boomark / email).