Politics
Prosecutors will seek death penalty for man accused of raping ex, killing young son in Arapahoe Co.
ARAPAHOE COUNTY, Colo. – Prosecutors for the 18th Judicial District will seek the death penalty for the man accused of stabbing his 6-year-old son to death in February.
District Attorney George Brauchler announced his intent to seek execution for Brandon Johnson, 27, at a preliminary hearing in Johnson’s case Friday morning.
In early February, Johnson allegedly raped his ex-girlfriend and the mother of his younger child before he allegedly stabbed his 6-year-old son in the neck, killing him.
The boy’s biological mother spoke with Denver7 after he was killed.
At the morning preliminary hearing, an eighth count of first-degree murder after deliberation was added to Johnson’s charge list after the judge determined the state had established probable cause to add the charge – the most serious murder charge on Colorado’s law books.
He also faces first-degree murder of a victim under age 12 in a position of trust, child abuse causing death, sexual assault, menacing and various committing a crime with a weapon charges.
Johnson’s public defender had sought to make a plea deal if prosecutors decided not to pursue the death penalty, but withdrew the deal when Brauchler said he would pursue execution for Johnson.
Several law enforcement agents testified at the morning preliminary hearing about the crime scene and interviews with Johnson and his ex-girlfriend.
An investigator with the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office testified that Johnson told his girlfriend, “All I wanted was a family,” after he allegedly raped her and stabbed his son.
The investigator said the ex-girlfriend told her that Johnson had told her not to scream while he was assaulting her or he would kill her. After she pleaded with him not to hurt his children, he walked to the bedroom and she heard his 6-year-old son scream.
Another investigator who testified Friday said that Johnson had said he was “going to kill everybody in the house” while he was assaulting his ex. She had texted him days earlier that she was seeing and sleeping with a new man.
The court took a lunch break and will resume at 2 p.m. Johnson is set to be arraigned on the new charges in the second portion of the hearing.
Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper has previously said that no one will be executed in Colorado while he is governor. He has already put on case on hold indefinitely.
Aurora theater shooter James Holmes received a life sentence for his crimes, and only one person, Gary Lee Davis, has been executed since 1977 in Colorado.
Three people – Nathan Dunlap, Sir Mario Owens, and Robert Ray – remain on Colorado’s death row.
A jury would have to unanimously find Johnson guilty of first-degree murder in order for him to be sentenced to death. If the verdict is not unanimous and he is found guilty, Johnson would be sentenced to life in prison.
The ACLU of Colorado strongly objected to Brauchler’s decision Friday, saying the DA has “wasted millions of taxpayer dollars on the Aurora theater trial…Similarly, the defendant in this case has offered to enter a guilty plea and accept a sentence of life without parole, rendering a costly trial unnecessary.”
“The ACLU of Colorado is disappointed by Arapahoe County DA George Brauchler’s decision to pursue the death penalty in yet another case, an outlier decision in direct contradiction to movement across Colorado and the rest of the country away from spending limited resources in the pursuit of death,” ACLU of Colorado Executive Director Nathan Woodliff-Stanley said in a news release.
This story is still developing; stay posted to Denver7 for updates from the court Friday afternoon.
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Proposed amendment for 2018 would cap new residential permits at 1 percent in major Colo. metros
DENVER – It’s quite the long shot, but one of the first constitutional amendments that will try to get on the 2018 ballot aims to limit residential growth in Colorado’s highest-populated counties.
Filed by a Golden man and a woman from Wheat Ridge, the so-called “Proposition 4” will aim to limit new residential building permits in Adams, Arapahoe, Boulder, Broomfield, Denver, Douglas, El Paso, Jefferson, Larimer and Weld counties to 1 percent of the current number of existing units in both 2019 and 2020.
The proposition would also require 30 percent of new developments be affordable housing or affordable senior housing.
If approved, residents of each county or city would have to vote to overturn or modify the caps starting in 2021.
The proposal stems from a flood of new Colorado residents and new housing being built in the Denver and Colorado Springs metro areas in recent years.
But the proposition has a steep uphill climb if it is ever to make it to the ballot.
After Colorado voters passed Amendment 71 in the 2016 General Election, the ballot proposal will have to get around 100,000 ballot signatures – of which 2 percent will have to come from each Senate district in the state. That could prove difficult as the proposed amendment would not affect a large number of those districts in rural or less-densely-populated areas of the state.
The proposition would also have to pass with at least 55 percent of the vote – another requirement for constitutional amendments passed via Amendment 71.
Golden already has a growth limit cap, which was met this year in August. Boulder has a 1 percent growth cap as well, but it is not limited on a year-by-year basis.
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President Obama, Fox News hosts in war of words over Obama’s Rolling Stone comments on network
DENVER – President Barack Obama and Fox News personalities are in a war of words after the president criticized the 24-hour network for its role in the election in a recent interview with Rolling Stone.
The magazine asked Obama in the interview, released Monday, if he still thought the U.S. was “a progressive country.”
Obama responded by saying Democrats had trouble this election getting working-class white voters who cast ballots for him to do the same for Hillary Clinton. Many of the votes went to Donald Trump.
“I think that part of it has to do with our inability, our failure, to reach those voters effectively,” Obama told Rolling Stone. “Part of it is Fox News in every bar and restaurant in big chunks of the country, but part of it is also Democrats not working at a grassroots level, being in there, showing up, making arguments.”
“We spend a lot of time focused on international policy and national policy and less time being on the ground,” Obama continued.
Fox News is the top-rated cable network and is extremely popular with conservatives, though the median age of its demographic is 68, according to Quartz.
Fox News personalities have lashed back at Obama’s statements since they were released. Politico has documented some of their statements.
Howard Kurtz said Obama was “scapegoating” the network; Eric Bolling pointed out that Democrats rarely come on the network, and Megyn Kelly said Obama “just wants to lament that the middle of the country is watching” Fox News.
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Colorado Dept. of Agriculture certifies 3 hemp seed varieties for cultivation
DENVER – A Kentucky-based hemp seed grower is the first company to have its seeds approved and officially certified by the Colorado Department of Agriculture.
Lexington, Kentucky-based Schiavi Seeds LLC had three separate seed varieties certified as CDA Approved Certified Seeds under the new program, which aims to promote hemp agriculture in the state.
CDA has worked with CSGA and Colorado State University over the past several months to breed plants that produce seeds under the 0.3 percent THC content threshold to qualify as hemp and not psychoactive marijuana.
Varying seed types were grown and tested in trials in different parts of the state in order to find ideal conditions for hemp cultivation.
Colorado law requires industrial hemp seeds to contain less than 0.3 percent THC. Three trial seeds from Schiavi Seeds – Eletta Campana, Fibranova and Helena – passed trial tests and were accepted by the state Seed Growers Association’s review board.
CDA says seeds submitted by Fort Collins-based New West Genetics have also passed the THC trial, but still have to be accepted by the review board before they can also be labeled as a CDA Approved Certified Seed.
Congress approved hemp production in 2014, but a state certification like Colorado’s is necessary to raise the crop.
Colorado farmers will be able to start buying and growing the seeds next year.
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Donald Trump backs off some campaign promises, reinforces others in ’60 Minutes’ interview
DENVER – Americans got their first look at what a Donald Trump White House will look like Sunday in an interview with “60 Minutes,” and the president-elect is already tamping down expectations for some of the promises he made during the campaign season.
Trump’s interview with Leslie Stahl was done last week and released Sunday. The two talked about the election, taxes, the Affordable Care Act, foreign policy, immigration and the economy, among other subjects. Continue reading
Howard Dean not pleased with de-icing at DIA during snowstorm, but thanks United crews
DENVER – Former Vermont Governor Howard Dean was among those not happy to be stuck on the tarmac at the Denver International Airport Thursday evening as a snowstorm moved through.
Dean, who is also the former Democratic National Committee Chair and ran for president in 2004, tweeted that he was stuck at the airport for five hours as crews worked to de-ice the plane and runways.
“Denver is a beautiful airport and possibly the worst run in the US,” he initially wrote.
Minutes later, he tweeted that the captain had told passengers the episode was the “longest de-icing in his career.”
Captain reports ” longest de icing in his career”. So far an hour and a half. Flights delayed four to five hours so far.
— Howard Dean (@GovHowardDean) November 18, 2016
But just before 2 a.m. Friday, Dean was thanking United Airlines crews, saying “they never lost their cool.”
Kudos to the crew of @United 12 tonight. Five hour delay and they never lost their cool.
— Howard Dean (@GovHowardDean) November 18, 2016
Several flights were canceled as the quick-moving storm blew through the DIA area. Many United and AirCanada flights were delayed, some were canceled, and at least one Spirit Airlines flight was also canceled altogether.
DIA officials told Denver7 that deicing is handled by each airline and their contractors, and not by the airport itself.
Denver7 obtained a statement from United Airline officials which stated, in part, “Our team is working closely with our vendor to get the aircraft deiced and get our customers to their destinations. We apologize for any extra delays.”
Delta, Frontier and Southwest Airlines reported no problems in their deicing procedures.
Flights were operating normally at DIA Friday morning.
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Women submitted 150K more votes than men in Colorado; 41-60 age group had highest turnout
DENVER – Women outvoted men in Colorado and outpaced their population percentage in the Centennial State during the 2016 General Election, according to voting demographics released by the Colorado Secretary of State Thursday.
Thursday’s release of ballot counts and demographic breakdowns will be the final daily count released until voting numbers are finalized and released by the office Dec. 8.
County clerks are still counting ballots sent in by military and overseas voters, as well as those that had to be cured because voters forgot to sign their ballot or needed to have their signature verified.
Clerks offices have until Nov. 22 to finish counting provisional ballots and will have to turn their official results into the Secretary of State’s Office by Nov. 25.
As of Thursday’s release, 2,880,888 ballots have been counted in Colorado. When compared to the latest number of registered active and non-active voters, that number represents 75 percent turnout in Colorado.
That number is not likely to change much, as the number of ballots counted each day has dwindled this week.
Perhaps the most outstanding portion of data in the demographic breakdown shows the vast difference in the number of woman versus the number of men who voted in Colorado.
Women cast 1,495,813 ballots so far in the state, while men cast 1,349,045 ballots. That is a difference of 146,768. There are currently 36,030 ballots submitted by people who didn’t indicate their gender when registering, which represent just 1.25 percent of total votes so far.
According to 2015 U.S. Census data, women made up 49.7 percent of Coloradans, while men made up the remaining 50.3 percent.
But in this election, 51.9 percent of voters were women while just 46.8 percent were men.
Voters aged 41-60 had the highest turnout percentage by far. That age group submitted 35.8 percent of ballots. Coming in second were people aged 26-40, who sent in 25.3 percent of ballots.
Voters aged 61-70 submitted 16.7 percent of ballots; voters aged 71+ represent 11.8 percent of votes; and voters aged 18-25 sent in the smallest share of ballots: just 10.4 percent.
Women aged 41-60 had the highest overall turnout, submitting a total of 531,763 ballots so far.
Another outstanding data point is the vast difference in the number of registered Democrats who are women. A total of 558,967 female Democrats voted, compared to just 372,247 male Dems. That is a difference of 186,720 votes.
But the number of registered Republican and independent women who submitted ballots was in the mid-400,000s and within 20,000 of the number of men who voted registered to either party, or lack thereof.
Current voting percentages currently sit as follows, calculated by the number of submissions by people registered to each party: Republicans 33.4 percent; Democrats 32.7 percent; unaffiliated voters 32.1 percent; Libertarians 1.1 percent.
Colorado’s official election results page does not quite reflect the latest count; it is approximately 70,000 votes short. But those results show Hillary Clinton winning Colorado 48.1 percent to Donald Trump’s 43.3 percent.
Denver7 will update ballot totals and voting turnout once they are finalized. Stay posted to the Denver7 politics page for the latest updates from the political world.
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Groups seek changes to Facebook and Google after scourge of fake news during election
DENVER – “I think Trump is in the White House because of me. His followers don’t fact-check anything — they’ll post everything, believe anything.”
That’s what Paul Horner, who The Washington Post calls the “impresario of a Facebook fake-news empire,” told The Post about how he inundated Facebook and the rest of the internet with fake news in the lead-up to the General Election.
The Post spoke with Horner in a story published Thursday about how fake news was propagated across the internet via Facebook, Google and other social media sites, and made its way into the daily reading of both conservatives and liberals alike.
FAKE NEWS SPREAD BY MAJOR CAMPAIGN FIGURES
BuzzFeed News found that fake news stories generated more overall engagement than real news in the final months leading up to Election Day – outpacing the New York Times, Washington Post and ABC News, among many others.
Their analysis found the top-20 fake election stories generated around 8.7 million total reactions, shares and comments during that time, compared to 7.3 million in total engagement for the top-20 stories from major news outlets.
It’s likely you’ve seen, read or shared some of the fake news yourself.
A fake story by fake news outlet the “Denver Guardian” saying an FBI agent involved in the Clinton email scandal was found dead got more than 500,000 comments, reactions and shares, though it was quickly outed as a fake by most Denver news outlets.
The most-shared fake news story came from another fake outlet, “ETF News,” which stated that Pope Francis had “shocked the world” by endorsing Donald Trump for president.
Horner is behind one of the highest-trafficked fake news sites, abcnews.com.co, which many mistook as American news outlet ABC News.
Some of Trump’s closest advisors and family — Kellyanne Conway, Eric Trump and Corey Lewandowski – all tweeted or retweeted an article from his fake site about a “Trump protester” who said he was “paid $3,500 to protest Trump’s rally.”
Thousands of people shared the story, and it is still cited by many people as proof that anti-Trump protesters who have taken to the streets both before and after the election are being paid by liberal groups or the Clinton campaign.
“His campaign manager posted my story about a protester getting paid $3,500 as fact,” Horner told The Post. “Like, I made that up. I posted a fake ad on Craigslist.”
One person who shared the story saw it receive hundreds of shares and reactions, even though Snopes had de-bunked the story as fake several days earlier.
FACEBOOK, GOOGLE ADDRESS FAKE NEWS SITES
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg originally said that the idea that fake news being spread on his platform influenced the election was “a pretty crazy idea” two days after the election.
But days later, he published a long post saying that “more than 99% of what people see is authentic” on Facebook, but that the company had “already launched work enabling our community to flag hoaxes and fake news, and there is more we can do here.”
Some have pointed to the spread of fake news happening after Facebook got rid of the people who controlled its news algorithm over complaints they were censoring conservative content. The company switched to a mostly-automated system that at times put fake news at the top of its “trending news” category.
Google said it was suspending its paid web advertising service, AdSense, for fake news sites after BuzzFeed uncovered a slew of Macedonians creating fake news sites for profit.
“This whole Google AdSense thing is pretty scary. And all this Facebook stuff,” Horner said. “Right now I make like $10,000 a month from AdSense.”
And while many have blamed Facebook, Google and other social media sites for aiding in the spread of such fake stories, Horner blames people themselves.
“Honestly, people are definitely dumber,” he told The Post. “They just keep passing stuff around. Nobody fact-checks things anymore.”
Horner said he started making fake news sites to further his career in parody; he said he aims to be like The Onion when writing the stories. He says he operates at least 10 fakes news sites, but didn’t tell The Post all of them.
But his fake ABC News site has some of the most-shared fake news of the past several months: “Obama Signs Executive Order Declaring Investigation Into Election Results; Revote Planned”; “Obama Signs Executive Order Banning The National Anthem At All Sporting Events”; “DRUGS IN COLORADO: New Deadly Strain Of Marijuana Turning Users Gay”; “Donald Trump Tweets Image Of His Penis – WARNING: Graphic Content” are among a few on the front page of the site.
On Thursday, Poynter published an open letter from an organization of fact-checkers calling on Zuckerberg and Facebook to “start an open conversation on the principles that could underpin a more accurate news ecosystem on its News Feed.”
“Facebook should strengthen users’ ability to identify fake posts and false news by themselves, as the scale of the problem is too vast for a purely top-down approach,” the letter continued.
President Barack Obama criticized the spread of fake news while in Germany Thursday, calling such reports a “threat to democracy,” according to the New York Times.
The ball now appears to be in Facebook and Google’s court. As arguably the two-largest information sharing networks in the world, it will be up to them to determine what changes are necessary and implemented.
Until then, it will take a concerted effort on behalf of news media and consumers alike to out any fake news as false.
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Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner picked to head National Republican Senatorial Committee
DENVER – Colorado’s junior Senator, Cory Gardner, was picked to serve as a high-ranking member of the Republican leadership team in the U.S. Senate Wednesday morning.
Gardner was elected to be the new National Republican Senatorial Committee chairman and will replace Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker as the chairman.
The committee aims to increase the Republican majority in the Senate through fundraising and other campaigning, so Gardner will be in charge of providing support and planning to Republicans running for re-election or trying to be elected to a seat in the Senate.
“I am excited about this expanded opportunity to serve Coloradans and make their voice heard on a larger stage. I am honored to have the confidence of the other Republican Senators to take on this leadership role and I won’t let them down,” Sen. Gardner said in a news release.
Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell will serve as Senate Republican leader; Texas Sen. John Cornyn will be Senate Republican whip; South Dakota Sen. John Thune will serve as Senate Republican Conference chairman; Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso will be Senate Republican Policy Committee chairman and Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt will serve as Senate Republican Conference vice chairman.
On the Democrat’s side, New York Sen. Chuck Schumer was elected to be Minority Leader, replacing Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, who is retiring. Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin will be Minority whip and Washington Sen. Patty Murray will be assistant leader.
In the House, current Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi says she will seek re-election to the job.
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Transgender woman’s car vandalized with hate speech, pro-Trump message in Denver’s Capitol Hill
DENVER — A transgender woman says she woke up to find her car vandalized with hate speech, a swastika and a pro-Donald Trump message in Denver’s Capitol Hill Wednesday morning, and police are now investigating.
Amber Timmons posted photos of the hate speech spray-painted on her car Wednesday morning to Facebook. Continue reading