Twists & Turns In Colo. Courtrooms

[AmyStrange]

Twists & Turns In Colo. Courtrooms
By Andrew Cohen (CBS) Attorney Andrew Cohen analyzes legal issues for CBS News and CBSNews.com.
Sept. 17, 2004

Why, oh why do all the freakish turns in the law have to take place in Colorado?
-----------
FROM: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/09/17/opinion/courtwatch/main644224.shtml
Must be something in the water up here at altitude. In the past decade or so, the sparsely populated state of Colorado has seen far more than its share of high-profile legal tussles and certainly more courtroom controversy than any jurisdiction would welcome.

First there was the Rocky Flats’ federal grand jury dustup. Then there was the JonBenet Ramsey murder case catastrophe. Then there was the hubbub over the lost documents in the Timothy McVeigh trial. Then came the debacle over the Columbine High School shooting investigation and the hapless Kobe Bryant rape prosecution, replete with all the administrative errors you’d never want to see in a case. If Florida deserves its reputation for zany elections, Colorado deserves one for zany developments in its criminal justice system.

On Thursday, that reputation crystallized and expanded with two bits of news about Columbine and Kobe. On the Columbine front, according to both Denver papers, a state grand jury concluded that local officials “kept under wraps” an embarrassing draft of a search warrant never presented to a judge before the school massacre that might have enabled the police to stop Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold before they started shooting.

On the Bryant front, the Vail Daily newspaper, the hometown paper for Eagle, Colo., published on its Web site the heretofore sealed transcript of the interview Bryant gave to police investigators just before he was arrested on a rape charge. How did the paper get the transcript? It arrived unannounced in the mail, just like you see it in the movies. When it comes to media leaks, who says New York and Washington get all the drama?

<SNIP>

©MMIV, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.