Legal Question in Criminal Law in Colorado

Over a year ago my husband was arrested for sexual assualt on a child. The charge was from an incident that supposably happend when he was 13 years old. A girl that his mother babysat when he was 13 had recently claimed that my husband and her brother had sexually assualted her when she was 5 years old. My husband was charged as a juvenile and put in jail on a $50,000 bond.The brother was also arrested and charged with incest. I got my husband bonded out and got him a lawyer. We then started going through the long court process and went to many different hearings where we were told nothing. They had zero evidence that anything happened just the statement that the sister gave about it happening to her. A little while later we were contacted by the prosecution, they wanted to drop the charges against my husband in exchange for him going on stand and testifiying against the brother about the brother doing something to the sisters. My husband of course told them no becase he knew absolutely nothing about anything like that ever happening and he was definetly not going to go on stand and lie. The whole thing just continued to drag on. Later on we found out that the sister who made all the claims had written a letter to the courts saying that she lied about what she said her brother and others did to her she was just trying to get out of her own trouble and wanted the charges against him dropped. Our lawyer got this letter submitted in our case right before our last hearing before trial. At the hearing the judge said that before the trial could start the prosecution had to bring the sister in and she had to explain the letter she had written. The Friday before our trial was set to start the prosecution faxed a motion to dismiss all charges to our lawyer because they could not find the sister. Needless to say we are super excited these bogus charges were dropped but the thing that is not setting well is the fact that the county can even do this. They threw my husband in jail and drug him through the mud for over a year on a case that had zero evidence and should have been immediately thrown out. We had to put up a lot of money to get this all to go away and even my husbands name is tarnished now in the small town where all of this occured. Theyy knew they had nothing and it seems like they were just using this to scare my husband into saying something about the brother. I thought the way the system worked was if you needed information from someone you subpeonad them to testify in court not build a huge bogus case against them? We want to know if we can sue the county for all of this?


Asked on 12/02/11, 9:52 pm

1 Answer from Attorneys
Jason Savela The Savela Law Firm, PC

Yes, suing is possible, but likely not a great outcome unless alleged victim has money or the cops/DA had reason to believe this was not a valid report or charge. From the face of it, it seems like they arrested with probable cause. I doubt they need any more.

The way to deal with this is at the polls. Get a new DA, new police chief, new Sheriff.

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Answered on 12/06/11, 10:12 am


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