(A small trial on a dog’s being off-leash exposed quite a bit in the corruption of the City of Lakewood and big holes in the entire judiciary system. This is Part 1 on what this small trial that ended in a mistrial/dismissal exposed.)

By Frank Sturgell

The City of Lakewood, Colorado’s Municipal Prosecutor, Kimberly Guzman, an employee of City Attorney Alison McKenney-Brown, requested 2 potential jurors to be thrown off of a petty dog off-leash trial on Friday, May 17, 2024 in Lakewood’s Municipal Courtroom A. This jurist removal procedure is called a pre-emptive strike during voir dire. Voir dire is the process of selecting jurors. Prosecutors should not be allowed to participate in pre-emptive strikes since they are not constitutional. A jury must be as impartial as possible to the Defendant and the Defendant only. The practice of prosecutors rejecting jurors has definitely led to the United States having the most incarcerated people in the world, which certainly inflates the bank accounts of the Prison Industrial Complex. There are some very serious and dangerous reasons for the legal industry to halt the practice of prosectuors rejecting jurors. It is an impossibility to call the United States the “Land of the Free,” while it has the most prisoners.

Prosecutors are not interested in justice and impartiality. They want that “victory.” Sometimes its a victory to please the boss whether that is a City Attorney, City Manager, Mayor, District Attorney, Attorney General, Governor, etc. and sometimes its plain overgrown ego. A jury that has an emotional attachment to them due to their position in society and the government will help grant that victory. How else would they have the confidence to bring a witnessless, evidenceless case where the supposed victim had the least injuries and violated the same laws? Prosecutors know they can convict people that are not guilty by demanding a jury that is partial to them and not the defendant.

After observing and participating in enough voir dires, which is when attorneys question potential jurors to select those they think will be most sympathetic to their side; the weeding out of potential jurors comes down to 2 divergent ideas:

• Prosecutors want juries filled with as many people that have an emotional attachment to law enforcement and the government as possible.
• Defense Attorneys want juries of people educated on how the system works and having the ability to weigh the facts by their own independent thinking. Defense attorneys typically would rather have a juror that weighs the evidence impartially than a person that is going to tend to rely on emotion.

Narrowing voir dire down to its most basic elements, prosecutors want jurors who will decide based on emotion and the defense wants jurors who are more sophisticated and cannot be easily fooled. The only times I have seen any divergence from these two clashing ideas of emotion versus thinking are when the defense doesn’t have a concrete plan and makes their trial more difficult.

The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers states in their article, “The focus on jury impartiality was rooted in the desire to preserve individual liberty in the face of a tyrannical government.” – https://www.nacdl.org/Landing/Impartial-Representative-Jury

Prosecutors love to say that they are the People. They are not the People. They are supposed to represent the People. They don’t do that.  Far too often they refuse to represent the People and only represent their egos to fill out stat sheets and ambition. I’ve also seen many persecutions to nail a Defendant who is not liked by the government or has a relative that is not liked by the government – and too often not liked simply for the content of their factual free speech. This very much appears to be one of those cases.  Prosecutors have made themselves a club separate from the People.

Prosecutors write on the cover page of the Complaint filed in criminal courts, “The People v.  (Insert Defendant’s name here.)”  This case at hand is supposed to be concerning the People of the City of Lakewood v. Mario Gonzalez, not the Lakewood City Attorney v. Mario Gonzalez.  The details of the case that will come later in the story will show that this really isn’t People of the City of Lakewood v. Mario Gonzalez, but is Lakewood City Attorney v. Mario Gonzalez.  Also ironic that a person suing the government in civil court does not list “The People” as Defendants.  So, the reverse is not true.

The reality of this case being the People of the City of Lakewood v. Mario Gonzalez begs the Constitutional question:

• How were the 2 potential jurors biased against the People of the City of Lakewood?
• How were these 2 men biased against all or a majority of the citizens in a city where they choose to live – including bias against themselves?

Being biased against prosecutors is immaterial. Biases against the police of that city or in general is also immaterial. Biases against the attorneys in general is immaterial.  Biases from the People against these government officials usually comes from being treated unfairly by these government officials.  The only material Constitutional question is whether a potential juror has a bias against the Defendant or not. The goal of the justice of a jury on one’s peers is to be impartial to the Defendant and to judge the evidence based on facts if they are guilty of the crime they are charged with or not.

Per the Constitution, judges should ask basic questions to ensure impartiality to the Defendant and defense attorneys can remove potential jurors that might be biased toward their client, but the practice of prosecutors choosing who will be most biased to side with them and not justice cannot continue. 

How Can A Government Choose A Jury Of One’s Peers?

The idea that a government has any right to choose who your peers are is absurd, whether as a Defendant or otherwise. Too often, prosecutors intentionally remove the most likely peers of the Defendant to create an advantage and rig a partial jury. The term jury of one’s peers comes from the Magna Carta from England in 1215. The Constitution of the United States’ 6th Amendment is based off of the Magna Carta. The 6th Amendment states:

“In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed . . .”

It is a slight change in language to say impartial jury from a jury of one’s peers, but our judiciary is delivering neither.

The language of the Constitution is quite clear that the jury is supposed to be as impartial as possible to the Defendant and the Defendant only. The Constitution’s Bill of Rights are to be a restraint on government actors, particularly prosecutors and judges. Allowing a juror that is partial to the Defendant is also not impartial, but that is the job of a judge per certain written court rules, not a prosecutor.  Those rules are written in the Colorado Rules of Criminal Procedure (C.R.C.P.) Rule 24 (a)(b) and (c), C.R.C.P. Rule 24.  C.R.C.P. 24 (d) and Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure Rule 24 allow pre-emptive strikes by both the Prosecution and the Defense attorneys.  By allowing prosecutors to demand a jury that is partial against the Defendant, C.R.C.P. 24(d) and F.R.C.P. 24 are unconstitutional and must be replaced.  Colorado Peoples News has found at least 3 other Court rules are unconstitutional as well including process of service that demands a server serve both the State employee and State Attorney General while all others only have to be served one of those.  It is imperative to clean up the judiciary that ‘We The People’ participate in a thorough Constitutional review of every Federal, every state, every county, and municipality.

A prosecutor picking a jury partial to the prosecution is certainly grounds for an appeal by the Defense on Constitutional grounds despite the probability of following of unconstitutional Court rules. Hopefully, an appellate challenge would also get rid of these unconstitutional Court rules.

Prosecutor Guzman’s pre-emptive strikes to remove the 2 potential jurors were met with an objection in the form of a Baston Challenge from defense attorney Anita Springsteen. A Batson Challenge is an objection to a potential juror removal because of the potential of discrimination based on the person’s identity. Recognized biases include gender, race, sexual orientation, and nationality. In this case both of the potential jurors that were removed were the only 2 people of color in the potential jury pool.  1 was Latino as well and the other was Asian.

Defense attorney Anita Springsteen made a Batson Challenge. The Batson Challenge is 1986 U.S. Supreme Court case law (Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986)) to reduce partiality to a Defendant’s identity. Prosecutor Guzman admitted that the City Attorney searched each of the potential jurors if any of them has been prosecuted by the City of Lakewood for anything  when the received the list. Judge Clien approved the pre-emptive strikes.

The City Attorney attempted to overcome this challenge by stating she rejected these jurors due to their disregard for law enforcement and the fact that the Hispanic man was in the database as having been previously prosecuted by Lakewood. We don’t know what the men were previously charged with and we don’t know if they went to trial, took a plea, or had their cases dismissed. We have a court due to prosecutors telling them to give small time offenders a lifetime ban from their right to be a juror in the city that they have chosen to reside. This is a municipal court. The major cases go to Jefferson County to be tried at the Jefferson County Court’s Taj Mahal in Golden, CO. Where does the list end? Driving 26 in a 25 mph zone? Mistakenly allowing trash to drop out of their pockets? Drawing Sponge Bob on a sidewalk or selling lemonade at a roadside without a permit or even worse, the ultimate of high crimes and misdemeanors, putting ketchup on a hot dog? Whatever happened to doing one’s time or paying a fine to resolve the crime? How does one have a right be taken away for life simply because the government doesn’t like your speech and has retaliated? Something as petty as a previous dog off-leash or a traffic ticket could keep a person banned from their right to be a juror. Does it extend to false charges, even if dismissed? Serving for jury duty is not only a civic duty, but a Constitutional right. Why is this right being usurped by any previous prosecution whether convicted or not?

The Prosecutor’s stated argument to use the pre-emptive strike was that the 2 potential jurors could be biased toward the office that prosecuted them. Biased toward them because they have experienced the system? Part-time Lakewood Municipal Judge Carrie Clien obliged the prosecution’s peremptory challenge over the objection of defense attorney Anita Springsteen, whose Hispanic client complained he would not have a jury of his peers. The Constitution’s 6th Amendment is very clear that a Defendant is to have an impartial jury, not the Prosecution. This is clear case of a judiciary demanding jury that could have been more partial to the Defendant just to please the government. Judge Clein conceded that the prosecutors should have informed the defense they had pulled arrest/prosecution records of jurors – but found it to be “harmless error“.

The Defendant is Latino.  How did this judge allow the removal of 2 potential jurors who very well could have been the closest to being peers to the Defendant in the jury pool? Particularly in a city such as Lakewood that is so predominantly white and whose government has a terrible history of racial biases.  To remove them showed a partiality and bias. “The selection of a petit jury from a representative cross section of the community is an essential component of the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial.” – Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 U.S. 522, 528 (1975) In other words, people cannot be eliminated from juries because of who they are, but . . . . Why has our judiciary devolved to allow Constitutional rights to be removed within the Courts themselves?

University of Duke Professor Patrick Bayer performed a study on racial bias of juries in 2012 of juries in 2 Florida counties over 10 years. The study found that if a jury was all white, the difference in conviction rates between Black Defendants and White Defendants was nearly 16%. He also found that conviction rates of Black Defendants became nearly equal with White Defendants when just one Black person was in the jury.

The Colorado Supreme Court as well as the General Assembly has been grappling with identity biases in jury selection for a few years now.  We have an easy solution. Follow the Constitution and remove the pre-emptive strikes by prosecutors.

The Sixth Amendment right to an impartial jury is rooted in “the essential demands of fairness.” Aldridge v. United States, 283 U.S. 308, 310 (1931). But fairness to whom, the government and its prosecutors? Why? The ONLY fairness in question in regards to the Constitution is for the Defendant. The Bill of Rights was written as a restraint against the government to be tyrannical, but here we are allowing prosecutors to tyrannical as they want to be to rig trials to pat their stat sheets, inflate their egos, and violate the Constitution. Many of these jury case laws focus on trying to eliminate the racism and biases of the juries or the populous. We have not focused on eliminating on removing the racism of the ruling class and their government.

In this cases’ voir dire, there were 3 Constitutional violations in the pre-emptive strikes:

1. The Defendant’s rights to an impartial jury were impeded because the removed jurors showed no bias toward the Defendant.
2. The potential jurors rights were violated because they showed no impartiality to the Defendant, which is the only impartiality that matters. They also didn’t show any partiality to the prosecutor. The prosecutor had them removed because they may have had a thought of being impartial to the prosecution. How is this allowed in a Court other than to say the Courts of have collapsed?
3. Baston Challenge case law was not followed by either the prosecution or the judge concerning identity.

Details of The Incident

There was a fight in Bear Creek Lake Park between 3 dogs with minor injuries to 1 dog. The supposed victim, the victim’s dog the Defendant, and the Defendant’s wife each had minor injuries. The Defendant’s wife had the worst injuries from the incident.  The stress of the trial caused more harm than all of the superficial injuries combined. The Defendant was taken to the hospital for stress caused injuries.  Each of the 3 dogs; 2 of the Defendant’s and 1 of supposed victims in the fight started on leash prior to the dog fight. Another of the supposed victim’s dogs ran away at the start of the fight because it was permitted by the supposed victim to be off-leash in order to run away. The supposed victim, Shey Nelson admitted she permitted her smaller dog who ran away to be off-leash, but she was not ticketed by Lakewood Animal Control Officer Leesha Crookston who did not see the December 7, 2023 incident at Bear Creek Lake Park. She also had to have allowed her dog off-leash while her bigger dog fought as well. There were no witnesses.

Mr. Gonzalez was ticketed for permitting both of his dogs to be off-leash. His argument was that the handle slipped out of his hands and that he did not permit the dogs off-leash. In other words, the supposed victim did the same, except she more than likely permitted her dog off leash. The Defendant’s leash slipping out of his hand is not a permitting. This is one of the reasons why the term “supposed victim” is being used instead of victim.  The ticketing of one party, but not the other that admitted to the same offenses is an unequal treatment of the law in violation of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Treatment clause. 

Add in the fact that Animal Control Officer Crookston didn’t bother turning on her taxpayer funded bodycam during any of the post-incident interviews and you end up with an evidenceless, witnessless petty offense that no form of punishment is going to change any behaviors of a trial.  In other words, a waste of taxpayer money ripe of political vindictiveness and malicious prosecution. Animal Control Officer Crookston stated her reason was that she is not certified as a police officer. The People of the City of Lakewood and the State of Colorado are paying for that camera. Her job demands that she use it. The People demand that she use it because they are paying for her to use it. It’s beyond mysterious how a prosecutor went forward with this case when their officer couldn’t even turn on the bodycam to have the post-incident interviews as evidence. She never saw any part of the incident. Police will usually not issue a ticket on anything if they didn’t see it or had video, but this one did while the supposed victim admitted guilt and the Defendant fought the charge to trial.

Despite the facts of major crimes on the streets, in corporations, and in the government (particularly in Lakewood), the City of Lakewood chose to tie up money and physical and human resources over a dog being off-leash and a supposed vicious dog that the supposed victim could not identify even the owner of the other dogs in Court, why is the City of Lakewood spending valuable resources to answer a question whether a man in his mid-70s permitted his dogs to be off-leash or whether the leash slipped out of hands without anyone seeing what happened?

This trial was a microcosm of how distant prosecutors and the government has become from the People. They have become a separate entity from the People. Difficult to think that having a jury trial of a man in his mid-70s to answer the question if he permitted his dogs off leash is something the People of the City of Lakewood would want their taxpayer funds spent on. There is nothing for the elderly man to learn from any potential punishment to deter any behavior. But here we are. Even the supposed victim asked on the witness stand, “What are we doing here?” which was repeated by the Judge in a sidebar without the jury present.

There are a few political reasons that could be driving this game. The Defendant’s daughter was held in Jefferson County Detention Center for over a year for using a fire emoji in an email to City Council. She was kept there due to a $250,000 cash only bond. Even Derek Chauvin the Minneapolis Police Sergeant that was convicted of murdering George Floyd was given a surety bond of $100,000. Surety bonds allow own to get out of jail with a 10% down payment. Cash only bonds make one pay the full amount. Desiree Gonzalez’s imprisonment is a source in this Op-Ed piece by Anita Springsteen, https://coloradopeoplesnews.com/2024/03/03/op-ed-please-do-not-vote-for-rebekah-stewart-for-colorado-state-house-district-30/

The government is certainly going way overboard to crush dissent and attacks with all their weapons anyone that speaks up against the establishment across the political spectrum. The more facts and crimes of the government one uses in that speech, the harder they crack down. This theme continues through jury selections across the country. Prosecutors don’t want anyone that would speak up against wrongs committed by the government in juries. They don’t want those dissenters to teach other jurors how the system is rigged. It doesn’t have anything to do with being impartial to the Defendant. It has increasingly become to crush dissent, particularly from people that know the system. People that have been through the system, often know it and very possibly could dissent.

In summary, We The People need a government that conducts trials to be what the Constitution demands of them, a jury that is as impartial to the Defendant chosen by the Defendant or their attorney and a strict set of rules of when a judge can or cannot remove for very certain and detectable biases toward the Defendant and the Defendant only.

(Part 2 of the series on this small trial will expose the Lakewood judiciary further and a large hole in local policing on Federal land. Go ahead and drop that fishing line in Bear Creek Lake Park without a fishing license.)

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