Colorado’s governor and attorney general are asking the legislature for $600,000 to hire a group of attorneys who would be loaned out to the federal government to prosecute gun crimes in federal court.
Proponents say the initiative would target only the most dangerous offenders. But it would also let attorneys paid for by the state pursue cases that are no longer illegal under state law.
The Colorado legislature in 2021 rolled back a blanket prohibition barring people convicted of felonies from purchasing or possessing guns. Instead, only those convicted of committing the state’s most serious crimes, like murder, rape, assault, robbery, arson and child abuse, can’t have a firearm. Felony convictions for drug crimes and car theft, for instance, no longer trigger the ban.
Under federal law, however, a person convicted of any felony crime is still barred from buying or possessing a firearm or ammunition and faces a 10-year prison sentence if found guilty.
The money being requested by Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, alongside Gov. Jared Polis, would go toward paying four state lawyers to operate out of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Colorado. They would act as federal prosecutors specifically focused on gun crimes, including firearms’ possession charges against those so-called previous offenders.
There are four lawyers from the Denver City Attorney’s Office and one lawyer from the Aurora City Attorney’s Office who are already doing just that as part of a program created by U.S. Attorney Cole Finegan, the top federal prosecutor in the state. They started their work earlier this year and have already taken on dozens of cases.
Finegan said the initiative is aimed at getting the most dangerous people in the state off the street as efficiently as possible by asking judges to jail them pending trial and then by leveraging the stricter prison penalties that accompany federal criminal convictions.
“When I took this job, one of the things that was really shocking to me was simply how much violent crime we have in Colorado and how many guns we have in Colorado,” said Finegan, who was appointed by President Joe Biden. “There’s a small group of people that really perpetrates a lot of the violent crime in our community.”
Federal prosecutors have long used federal gun laws, and the strict penalties that accompany them, as a way to target violent offenders, particularly people accused of being in gangs and trafficking drugs. But with only about 45 total prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Colorado, fewer than the number in many district attorney’s offices, the scope of that work has been limited.
“I think an obligation we all have as public servants, and as people involved in law enforcement, is to be creative and to try to find different ways to get criminals off the street,” said Finegan, who served as Denver’s city attorney under then-Mayor John Hickenlooper. “If we have people walking around in our communities who are felons in possession of guns they shouldn’t be in possession of (committing crimes in the community), then we should get them off the street.”
How the program is working so far
Finegan said he originally wanted to recruit prosecutors from district attorney’s offices across Colorado for the initiative after hearing complaints from district attorneys about the changes to the state’s gun possession laws, but that option didn’t pan out. That’s when he turned to the city attorney’s offices in Denver and Aurora.
Denver City Attorney Kerry Tipper said the program with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, which costs Denver about $633,000 annually, was started under her predecessor, Kristin Bronson. Tipper views it as a big success.
“To have four folks who are just focused on (gun) crimes in Denver — I think that has made a difference in the safety of Denver’s residents,” said Tipper, a former state representative.
One of the federal cases the lawyers from the Denver City Attorney’s Office are pursuing is against a man previously convicted of felony drug crimes who used a stolen handgun in a downtown Denver shooting.
Edward Martin Jones’ conviction and 32-year prison sentence in the shooting were tossed in December 2022 by the Colorado Court of Appeals on a speedy-trial technicality, after which federal prosecutors charged him in June with being a previous offender in possession of a weapon.
A Colorado Sun review of court records indicates Jones would no longer be considered a previous offender under the state’s gun laws.
In another case, an attorney for the city acting as a federal prosecutor charged a man previously convicted of a felony with receiving guns bought by an alleged straw purchaser — a person who legally buys weapons with the intent of transferring them to someone who is prohibited from having them — at gun shops in the Denver area. The straw purchaser was also charged.
In a third case, a lawyer paid for by the Denver City Attorney’s Office is pursuing federal gun charges against two men — Mitchell Leland Baca and Jaki Martin-Birch — accused of committing a string of armed bank robberies. Baca has two prior felony convictions, according to federal prosecutors.
Finegan said the attorneys from Denver are focused on prosecuting gun crimes that happen in their city, while the attorney from Aurora is focused on going after gun crimes in theirs. So far, they are handling or have handled about 60 cases.
The prosecutor from the Aurora City Attorney’s Office is paid about $150,000 a year in salary and benefits.
A spokesperson for Polis, a Democrat, said the budget request is aimed at prosecuting federal gun crimes that happen in other parts of Colorado that can’t afford to loan out a lawyer to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
If the legislature approves the budget request, Finegan said the state lawyers will be assigned to cases in parts of Colorado where they’re needed most.
“We would try to be creative and look for places that we think they would make the most impact,” Finegan said.
Weiser, who is also a Democrat, said his office already works with federal law enforcement to investigate and prosecute drug crimes.
“The concept here is a similar one,” he said. “It’s a chance to keep Colorado safer. We’re relying on our federal partners rather than doing it ourselves.”
Weiser said he’s confident the state lawyers would be prosecuting only the most dangerous criminals.
“I believe the cases that we’re talking about here are ones that everyone would recognize are really problematic and troubling,” he said. “The other part about this proposal is we will have every ability to continue evaluating it. These will be state of Colorado employees. If this program is unhelpful or counterproductive in any way, we’re not married to it. We just want to give it a shot.”
How the proposal will be received by the legislature
When the Democratic-controlled Colorado legislature in 2021 limited the felony convictions that brand someone a previous offender under state gun laws, the change was made as part of a broader reclassification of felony and misdemeanor offenses. The shift made it so only those previously convicted of felony crimes that fall under the Victims Rights Act — like murder, rape and assault — were prohibited from purchasing or possessing a gun.
The legislation passed unanimously in the Senate and along party lines in the House.
Facing criticism for the change, the legislature revisited the issue in 2022 and, with bipartisan support, added back a list of dozens of felony convictions — engaging in a riot, human smuggling and unlawful termination of a pregnancy, to name a few — that bar someone from buying or having a firearm.
The budget proposal from Polis and Weiser is likely to meet resistance in the legislature from progressive Democrats, who have pushed for criminal justice reforms that reduce incarceration.
Two members of the Joint Budget Committee, which will be the first panel to vet the request, didn’t respond to Sun requests for comment. But state Sen. Dylan Roberts, a Frisco Democrat who sponsored the 2021 bill limiting who counts as a previous offender under state gun laws, said he will have questions about why the state has to foot the bill for federal prosecutions.
“If this is such a priority for the federal government,” he said, “why can’t the Department of Justice get Colorado’s U.S. Attorney’s office more funding for it?”
That being said, he’s generally OK with people being charged in federal court with crimes that they could no longer face on the state level.
“These are offenders that we need to make sure don’t have access to firearms,” said Roberts, who used to work as a local prosecutor.
Tipper was a state representative when the measures changing the state’s gun possession laws were debated at the Capitol. She voted for both. But she, too, supports using federal law to fill the new gaps in Colorado’s statutes.
“Regardless of what state law says, these are individuals who, under federal law, cannot possess firearms legally,” she said. “The way that the feds target these cases, they’re looking at individuals who are … creating unsafe conditions. I don’t have any reservation about leveraging a tool that exists to make Denverites safer.”
Weiser said he would prefer that the legislature add more felonies, like drug distribution, to the list under which someone could be charged in state court as being a previous offender in possession of a weapon.
But even if those changes were made, he thinks the partnership being proposed would still be worthwhile because of the harsher penalties in the federal criminal system, he said.
“I think there’s an argument that this would be a valuable enterprise even if Colorado hadn’t passed some of those laws,” he said.
The budget request will go before the full legislature, which reconvenes Jan. 10, sometime in early spring.