My lawyer was hired through a prepaid legal service to represent me on my sealing of records case. When the DA came out and told her the judge will not allow me to have my records sealed NO MATTER WHAT the lawyer had to say. Here is a copy of the letter containing all circumstances.
I am in the process of sealing my records to such a degree that I will not face undue prejudiced by potential employers. My PPL attorney and I were caught completely off guard by the DA's refusal to hear my case I believe that we should ask for some type of recusal due to the nature of the relationship between the judge and DA. The DA seemed to "know" what the judge was going to say or do before the case could even be heard. Both the city and county attorneys have objections to the sealing of my records and I am ignorant as to what they are. It seems like I am going into a situation where the deck is stacked against me and I don't' understand why there is an element of collusion on the part of the court and prosecutors. Abuse of process seems to be the name of the game in El Paso County. I am looking to move in a forward direction and have some conclusion to this story.
The original case of false information to a pawnbroker held some elements of deceit on the victims part. She had given me consent to pawn the item on her behalf and to give her the money for said item. There was no burglary involved in this case but the victim had lied about it to cover her drug use and loss of property from an abusive boyfriend. The police had questioned me on the matter and I gave them the details of what happened. I admitted to the false info charge because my fingerprints and name were attached to the item in question. At no point in time did I do anything illegal other than use drugs and pawn an item "which I didn't completely own". Getting any of the three public defenders to open my file on the case and look at it seemed to be almost impossible. General appearance by the same public defender for consecutive appearances in court seemed to be lacking. The motive for me to pawn the item in the first place was for the "victim" was for her to have some spending money. There was a probably at least a truck load of items that she had traded for drugs and she needed someone to "pin" the responsibility on so she chose to use the pawn ticket as a way to hold me accountable for the entire incident she had created.in my defense I had cooperated completely with law enforcement and even turned myself in so I could answer for court appearance. After not having adequate time to speak with my public defender and search all of my options, I got frustrated and hastily plead to petty theft charge in lieu of the felony charge of false info to pawnbroker. The case has since been closed and I have been very upset about not getting the help of the public defender at "the great expense of the state of Colorado". While individually I believe that all of my court appointed attorneys are very competent in performing their duties, I feel as if there was no collaboration on the part of the office of the public defender to ensure the "bringing up to speed" of defenders and cases when one attorney moves to another division. This has left communication entirely up to me. I don't have a formal education in law and procedure but attempt to speak intelligently and ask questions when I don't understand something. When I was given a 3x5 card indicating my advisement to seal my records I had asked the public defender to help me understand what I needed to do on my part and he just looked at me and shrugged his shoulders. So I feel that I have gotten the very short end of the stick all the way around.
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