Young people ages 10 to 18 who are accused of municipal violations in Denver can receive free legal representation from a public defender starting Thursday, thanks to a law unanimously passed by the City Council in December.
Before the law changed, young people in Denver who were ticketed and charged in municipal court with alleged crimes such as alcohol possession, trespassing, theft and minor assault were not offered free legal representation and could not receive courtroom advice from judges or city attorneys.
As a result, many kids immediately pleaded guilty because they felt they had no other choice.
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Wealthier parents who could afford it hired private attorneys to represent their child.
And if a kid wanted to challenge their case but their parents couldn’t afford a lawyer, the child represented themselves at trial, meaning they submitted evidence to the court, made opening and closing statements, wrote legal arguments to defend themselves and subpoenaed and cross-examined the witnesses, who in many cases were police officers.
“It’s pretty bizarre to think that an 11-year-old is going to do all of that on their own and do it well,” said Nicole Duncan, a senior public defender and youth attorney at the Office of the Municipal Public Defender for the city and county of Denver, who will begin representing minors in municipal cases this week.
“When I’m sharing this at the dinner table, or with friends and family, people are shocked because everybody is moving under the assumption that young people automatically always get legal counsel,” she said. “But that’s not true. They can get public defenders, no matter what, in state court, but in municipal cases, they either represent themselves or hire private counsel.”
Denver is the only Colorado county allowing public defenders to represent kids charged with municipal violations. Minors in other parts of the state who are not afforded that same benefit will continue to face dire consequences, Duncan said.
Minors involved in municipal court are more likely to face suspension or expulsion from school, which, according to a growing body of research, leads to further setbacks during and after their academic years and does little to reduce any more misbehavior.
The lack of legal representation in municipal court will continue to especially hurt kids of color and children with disabilities, the same groups who are already over-represented in Denver County’s municipal court system, Duncan said.
Black kids who have any contact with police during childhood are much more likely to be arrested by the time they’re a young adult, a trend that doesn’t affect white kids at nearly the same rate.
“No one thinks municipal court is a big deal. They think, ‘Oh, it’s just a ticket,’” Duncan said. “But there’s a possibility of it affecting school, immigration, their ability to get housing or a job and when they apply for schools in the future. Court systems touch every single part of people’s lives and it doesn’t matter whether it’s municipal court or state court — there will be consequences.”
The right to counsel and community resources
A defense attorney can help a child navigate a complex legal system, and their presence in the courtroom can affect plea negotiations and influence whether a kid is found guilty or innocent, Duncan said.
Because the kids do not usually face jail time, detention or removal from the home, they typically do not have lawyers appointed to represent them, said Colette Tvedt, chief municipal public defender for the City and County of Denver.
“Historically, in our country, you don’t have the right to counsel if that’s not something you’re facing,” she said.
In the past, Denver kids charged with crimes in municipal court, met with the city attorney (a prosecutor) and a diversion officer, who told them about their options to resolve the case, which often included accepting a plea deal, going to trial or, if they were eligible, or participating in a diversion program where their record would later be sealed if they met the conditions of the program.
The 2023 law allowing free public defenders for kids in Denver municipal court went into effect July 1. But the first municipal court docket, in session since the law went into effect, is Thursday at the Lindsey-Flanigan Courthouse.
That day, Duncan and her colleagues will meet individually with young people who want legal representation, and will offer other forms of help, too. Those include contact information for a youth peer specialist, who can connect kids to disability, education and immigration rights attorneys and housing resources or community-based organizations such as those providing addiction recovery support, food, mentorship, gardening activities and safe places for children to congregate.
“I’ll be getting to know the children and their families, personally, in order to know which are the best resources to connect them to, so they can become the best version of themselves or get to a better place and not having to keep coming into contact with the law,” said Kiersten Davis, a youth peer support specialist at Denver Municipal Public Defender’s Office.
Duncan will likely represent about 50 to 60 children, at any given time, and one other attorney at the Denver County Municipal Public Defender’s Office may defend around 20 to 30 kids, a manageable caseload, she said.
“But what makes it harder than a typical caseload is, when you do holistic representation, you’re not just meeting their needs about the legal case itself,” Duncan said.
“How’s their housing, how’s their food, do they have what they need, are they being threatened with suspension or expulsion? There’s extra things that go into it, versus just saying, ‘Do you want to plead guilty or not?’” Duncan said. “I can’t even have that conversation with a kid if they’re hungry.”
Defending kids in court is a unique skill, Duncan said. An attorney representing children must find a way to effectively help kids who may feel targeted in court but don’t have the vocabulary necessary to talk about or even describe their case, she said.
When representing kids in court, Duncan occasionally uses colored pencils to explain or illustrate complex concepts such as those relating to evidence in the case or the penalties the kid might be facing.
“It may seem like common sense that they may be found ‘not guilty’ of a certain allegation, but the way that the law is written, they might be found guilty,” Duncan said. “I have to take the time to really break these things down.”
Leaving behind crime to help others with similar life circumstances
Halim Ali had no lawyer when was convicted of theft when he was 16 years old. He said if he had access to a public defender in the late 1980s, he would not have been convicted of a crime he did not commit.
“That was a result of me defending myself and not knowing the system and admitting to things I probably would not have said if I was represented or if I knew how the judicial system worked at the time,” he said Tuesday.
The conviction kept him from being able to join the military and plagued his self-esteem, he said.
By then, Ali had already been suspended from school for fighting. And by the time he entered high school, people often called him a “juvenile delinquent” and a “troublemaker.”
“That really pushed me over the top,” he said of the municipal court conviction. “It made me feel like I was just destined to be a criminal, who would go to jail, and so I began to gravitate to activities and different situations that would lead to that end, and ultimately I was shot when I was 21.”
Ali has four felony convictions and many municipal court violations on his record and he has struggled with addiction and homelessness.
But now, Ali has an honorary doctorate in public service and is the executive director and founder of From The Heart Foundation, which offers substance use, mental and behavioral health programs and gun violence prevention services to kids who are primarily ages 13 to 18.
“My life is a dream. Now, I’m able to stand before these youth as a symbol of success and I can show them anything is possible,” he said. “Most of the youth I work with are plagued with anger issues — the same issues I was plagued with. I’m attempting to give these kids what I didn’t have.”
A need for funding to keep kids out of municipal court
The Denver Municipal Public Defender’s Office is planning to collect data that can show what schools are ticketing children most often and what demographics of kids are most affected by municipal court tickets.
“What we’ve been looking for is data within the Denver municipal system so far, and there is none, which is another example of how this is a space that has been ignored,” Duncan said.
Harsh school and municipal policies contribute to the so-called “school to prison pipeline” or the disproportionate rate of underprivileged minors and young adults who are incarcerated or involved in the criminal legal system at a young age.
When Duncan represented kids in state court who were charged as adults they often had municipal court tickets or problems at school.
“But if there had been intervention, at that municipal ticket stage, that could have been stopped right then and there because people would have been asking about and addressing certain needs that the kid had,” Duncan said.
Denver allocated $350,000 per year to cover the work done by one senior attorney, one legal administrative support assistant and one peer support specialist, according to a representative for City Councilwoman Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez, who co-sponsored the law.
But the city did not provide funding to cover the community-based programs and alternative sentencing options for young people who are referred there by the municipal court staff, Duncan said.
“That’s why we’re having conversations with a lot of organizations such as the Office of Children’s Affairs with the city to see how to tap into funding or if the court could request funding for kids that want to take classes at certain community-based organizations,” she said. “There are some organizations where if you want a mentor or a tutor, you have to pay out of pocket. And so, that’s the big gap.”
Improving Colorado’s municipal courts
Kids in municipal court may be referred to Fully Liberated Youth, an organization providing mentorship and mental health services for young people in Denver and Aurora who are at risk of involvement in the criminal justice system.
Some kids who are referred there may participate in an alternative-sentencing option and be asked to volunteer or do community service work there before their record is sealed.
The idea is to address the underlying issues that led to criminal activity, said Phillip Roybal, director of community and policy advocacy at Fully Liberated Youth.
“I think we will start to see a decrease in over-representation of these youth in the justice system now,” he said. “A lot of times, municipal charges are just an outward behavioral effect of something that is going on internally.”
Noble One, which provides peer coaching to adolescents with mental health and substance use disorders, will have a similar approach to helping young people referred there by the court.
The organization will help kids learn about healthy relationships, build life skills, set goals and stay accountable, said Kristen Rupprecht, founder and executive director of Noble One.
“The whole reason I started this business was to give kids the foundation of emotional processing and emotional regulation,” Rupprecht said.
“I have a son who was caught in the system and there weren’t the resources available that could have helped him with his mental and emotional stability to maybe not make the same choices again,” she said. “Having watched him be put into the system, put on probation, doing community service hours — none of that got to the root of the problem, which I believe, is their mental health issues or the modeling of what they’ve learned.”
Duncan hopes other municipalities across Colorado will offer kids free legal help.
“I am excited. This is a really cool thing to get to do, but I’m nervous because I don’t know where else in the state this exists,” Duncan said. “Depending on how this goes, it could set the tone for many other counties in the state.”