New Colorado law strengthens punishment for intimidating witnesses
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) -- A bill just signed into law aims to create harsher punishment for witness intimidation in Colorado -- something that's a lot more common that you might think.
"Often times witnesses, while they don't necessarily report the witness intimidation, it happens all of the time," Colorado Springs Attorney Jeremy Loew said.
Governor Jared Polis signed Senate Bill 22-024 or the "concerning changes to strengthen the crime of intimidating a witness" bill into law on March 17th. It makes the "intimidating a witness" charge a pre-charge offense or a stand-alone felony charge. According to Representative Matt Soper of Mesa and Delta counties, intimidating a witness was usually an added charge to a pre-existing charge.
Soper offered a specific fact pattern as an example demonstrating the changes the law aims to achieve.
"Lets say you have a couple, husband and wife who gets into a dispute, the husband says to his wife, 'if you go to the police, I'm going to kill you.' The police then are unable to charge the husband in this particular case with intimidating a witness because it was before any charges were filed," Rep. Soper said.
According to the bill text, a witness can be defined as a victim of a crime, a family member of a victim, or someone with first-hand knowledge of a crime.
"There's numerous people who seem to think that if they scare someone into refusing to testify at a trial that somehow they will escape the law and be able to escape prison time for the underlying criminal act that they did," Rep. Soper said. "That's just mind boggling to me."
Soper told KRDO this law is the product of conversations with multiple District Attorneys in the state. He added that this was a law that should have been proposed years ago to protect crime victims and every citizens right to a fair trial.
"There have been cases that I've handled where we have gone to trial and we have successfully been able to defeat the assault charge but the jury convicted on intimidating a witness because there is a text message sent that says don't come to trial. That's not allowed," Loew said.
Intimidating a witness is class four felony punishable by two to six years in prison if convicted. Loew tells KRDO the charge usually impacts homicide investigations the most.
"Prior to getting rid of the death penalty in Colorado, a lot of times when the death penalty was sought was when a witness was killed as part of a homicide trial," Loew said. "We obviously don't have the death penalty anymore but we still have witness tampering and witness killings, and witness intimidation and those are the times when it's most prevalent."
