News

Showing 13201 - 13222 of 50592

Three Ways to Kill the Death Penalty in Colorado

By Michael Roberts

The Colorado Supreme Court recently upheld a lower court’s decision to reverse David Bueno’s first-degree-murder conviction because evidence that might have helped him was withheld in his death-penalty case. Michael Radelet, a University of Colorado Boulder sociology professor and author of The History of the Death Penalty in Colorado, the definitive work on its subject, sees the Bueno case as a particularly compelling argument in favor of ending capital punishment in the state once and for all, and he sees multiple possibilities for how it might finally happen.

Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Fever Hits Colorado’s Luxury-Home Market

By Michael Roberts

Bitcoin and other forms of cryptocurrency are ultra-trendy among investors, speculators and others who dream of making a quick fortune. But they’re also becoming increasingly mainstream, especially among the super-rich, as illustrated by what appears to be a first for the luxury home market in Aspen. One seller with a spectacular property in the exclusive Starwood development has announced that interested buyers can pay for it using this form of exchange, a digital asset that’s secured using cryptography.

Post Broncos Writer Joins Site She Saw as Trying to Destroy Newspapers

By Michael Roberts

The Denver Post isn’t only losing thirty newsroom staffers via layoffs dictated by it’s “vulture” hedge fund owner, Alden Global Capital. The broadsheet is also bidding farewell to Nicki Jhabvala, Nick Kosmider and Nick Groke, three prominent sportswriters and Denver Broncos specialists who are leaping to The Athletic, a rapidly growing online sports website whose apparent interest in wiping out daily newspapers Jhabvala chastised in a tweet sent out mere months ago.

Hulking Hemp: Using Cannabis to Elevate Your Nutrition

By Madeline St. Amour

For Heather DeRose, hemp made sense because it checks off a lot of nutritional boxes. It’s high in magnesium, vitamins B and E, iron, zinc and omega-3 acids. Many of the vitamins it contains help support proper brain function, which in turn helps her epilepsy, she said.

Why Denver Post Staffers Not Targeted by Layoffs Could Still Be Leaving

By Michael Roberts

The Denver Post announced thirty layoffs, or nearly one-third of its newsroom staff, on March 14. Just shy of two weeks later, we still don’t know the identities of all those who’ll be leaving, and that information won’t be made official for two more thanks to a complicated system that allows some laid-off workers to “bump” individuals who haven’t been notified that their positions could be in danger. But at present, no daily reporters are being targeted, with the layoffs focusing on what Denver Newspaper Guild administrative officer Tony Mulligan refers to as “the second set of eyeballs.”

16th Street Mall Blocks With the Most Crimes

By Michael Roberts

Safety on the 16th Street Mall remains a major concern, as evidenced by the large amount of media coverage related to last week’s stabbing death of 29-year-old Derek Sorenson at a 17th and Welton 7-Eleven just steps away from the iconic Denver attraction. And while the 2016 implementation of a new safety plan appears to have decreased crime in the area overall, there’s still a considerable way to go according to our analysis of Denver Police Department data. Over the past month, 46 crimes have taken place on the mall, with sixteen happening on a single block.

Sh*tstorm After Study Finds No Causal Link Between Marijuana, Homelessness

By Michael Roberts

A new study about the impact of marijuana on Pueblo County maintains that there’s no evidence linking cannabis legalization and the increase of homelessness in the area. This contention has been ripped by Pueblo Police Chief Troy Davenport, who strongly believes such a connection exists, as well as the authors of a Pueblo Chieftain editorial that dismissed these findings as “junk science.” But one of the academics behind the document suggests that such critics would rather believe the sort of nonsense churned out by prohibitionists for decades than look at actual facts.

Reader: Focus on the Family Is the Worst Thing About Colorado

By Westword Staff

John Oliver caught the ire of Focus on the Family, a religious group in Colorado Springs that advocates for scary things like gay-conversion therapy, when the talk show host went after Vice President Mike Pence’s views on homosexuality. After the Brit argued Pence’s association with FOTF reinforced the theory that he is a hypocritical homophobe, Focus hit back.

Denver’s Chief Financial Officer Didn’t Know About $75K to Leslie Branch-Wise

By Michael Roberts

In 2013, nearly five years before police detective Leslie Branch-Wise unveiled inappropriate texts sent to her by Denver Mayor Michael Hancock, she received a $75,000 settlement from the city after making similar complaints about Wayne McDonald, a Hancock friend and employee fired over the matter. Now, a spokeswoman for Cary Kennedy says the former Colorado state treasurer, who’s running for governor and handily won the recent Colorado Democratic caucus, didn’t know anything about the payout even though she was serving as Hancock’s deputy mayor and the city’s chief financial officer at the time.