DENVER, COLORADO- Occupy Denver veteran Corey Donahue was released from county jail on Thursday, thwarting two surprise court filings to keep the activist in custody for additional months. Donahue had negotiated a global plea deal to serve concurrent sentences for his outstanding charges of inciting public protests in 2011 and 2012.
Yeah, those aren’t crimes, but when you’re an involuntary guest of the Denver jail, your stamina for disputing bogus accusations wanes with every bogus meal. Municipal court judges are as vindictive and perfunctory as the petty officials pressing the original charges. Engaging that crowd is not reciprocal, so it’s especially unrewarding if it means enduring protracted incarceration.
Having cleared his cases and completed the good-behavior obligations of a 9-month sentence for the nut-tap crime, Donahue was due to be released Thursday. But that morning, the Lindsey-Flanagan justice center activated an additional 2012 case which lawyers had been prevented from negotiating because the Division-3D judge withheld it from the docket. Neither private attorneys nor public defenders had been able to compel 3D to address that lingering case number. On Thursday the case mysteriously engaged…
As a result, on Thursday Denver sheriffs demanded a large cash bond and they scheduled Corey for an in-custody court appearance the next day. When funds were rushed to the bonding office, an even larger bond was imposed for a 2011 case specifically stipulated to have been dismissed by the terms of Donahue’s global plea.
Can they fucking do that? No. And yes, everyday. Municipal court despots are not accountable even to their consciences. We’ve seen Lindsey-Flanagan chief justice Martinez confabulate on the witness stand in federal court to suit his duplicitous machinations, and his minions embellished on his lead. Usually their victims, locked in the Van Cise-Simonet Detention Center across the plaza, are powerless to decline their sadism.
Clearing up this clerical error would take until after Christmas, so it seemed more in the holiday spirit to give Denver their blood money and take the courthouse to task afterward, from the relative comfort of being out of custody. WTF.