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“my name is dan lajock one of the associate attorneys here at wright law group we're growing we have three attorneys now myself um alexis and jimmy ligo just joined us but it's my first time meeting you guys so once again yeah my name is dan lay shock i'm uh you know it's another transfer plan to colorado like many people are i've been here about seven years now um and in fact it will be about seven years right in august um i came here in 2014 uh went to du law school um graduated there after three years in 2017”
“i started being a prosecutor though uh before i did defense and the first spot was in trinidad colorado i was there for a year um trinidad being pretty much the most southern town in colorado before you hit new mexico really kind of feels like new mexico more than colorado yeah but that whole area of the state has a kind of interesting vibe to it as well you know you're right next to the san gabriel crystal mountains um i was there you know about a year in trinidad i lived out on the western slope in montrose for about six months uh beautiful out there in montrose um but ultimately i ended up coming here to the springs”
“one of the one of the issues though that i always saw with our criminal justice system is that law enforcement are not equal investigators they they investigate pretty much one side of the story um you know and so they make up their mind very early on who they think is going to be the responsible party who they're going to charge with a crime and then they ask questions that are designed to build the case from that side and it's only one side it's the one that they want to prosecute”
“the domestic violence cases are always an interesting one because that's the one where i think it's the most biased that it comes in because that is the one where the police go in there and they literally have someone that they want to arrest um i think we've talked about this on some of the previous ones colorado law says that the police must make an arrest if there's a probable cause in a db case um you know a lot of these sort of cases you know shoplifting you know you talk to the police and it's like oh my god you know i've never done this before the police actually have the discretion whether or not they're going to really charge you the crime domestic violence cases no mandatory law says they have to make an arrest”
“the easiest thing to do is just to listen to the client i mean that is something that um law enforcement doesn't do the greatest job of and if they do they're only talking to somebody to pick out the little things that they can do to use against them um you know that's some of those rights that he gets anything that you can say canada will be used against you and that's what it is you're not you're not going to have when you're reading these police reports you're not going to have a full accounting of what is actually said um by the the defendant you're going to have the little snippets picked out that they think that they can use against them”
“a lot of these domestic violence cases come up in the light of pending divorces um and so you know their tensions are high somebody one party or another might think that oh i'm going through a divorce and i might be able to get a leg up on my significant other or soon to be ex significant other by filing a domestic violence criminal case and that's that happens more often than you think”
“the officer took the stand and said i literally just write down what the victim says in my report and it goes on the report and that's it um no no further investigation no sort of you know forensic questioning just whatever they say i'm taking for granted and it goes in my report”
“the earlier you can get an attorney in your criminal case the better um you know like right off the bat especially in some of these cases where um you know there there's another named victim in there if you want to try to get the protection order modified something like that those are going to be immediate things that an attorney can help you out with um also just sort of setting yourself up for taking good steps like maybe it's a dui case and you want to start looking at taking classes that might improve your offer or outcome down the road”
“any attorney who can make who makes promises during your initial phone call that should raise that should raise a red flag”
“at the end of the day the criminal justice system is run by people and people are different they change even the same person is going to be different from one day the next and so a lot of our at least initial offers in these cases are going to be dependent on one how the district attorney is feeling and to hell the judge is feeling and so anyone any attorney that comes in and promises you oh i know this is gonna how it's gonna go that's probably not the best advice”
“dui cases there are something called the standard field sobriety tests sfsts for short you know if you ever hear about people like walking in a line maybe raising a leg they do this thing where they say follow my finger with your eyes those are the standard field sobriety tests um one of the common things that we hear about is say the alphabet backwards that's actually not a real thing thank god they might ask you to count backwards or they might ask you to say the alphabet forward like you know say hey start from k and go to t but they're not going to ask you to say the alphabet anyway but the thing is on some of those more standard tests where it's like you know follow my finger walk in a straight line raise one leg they have these sort of clues that they use and the thing is almost across the board in every single dui case they're going to write that somebody fails those tests”
“walking in a line um because the police officer tells you to and they say that's you know maybe you don't exactly touch the tip of your you know your your toes to your heel like you're supposed to you missed by maybe half a centimeter that's a clue it doesn't matter if you only miss heel toe once on the entire nine steps that you take um it doesn't matter if you you know miss it every single time it doesn't matter if you miss it by half a centimeter or by you know half a foot they were going to mark that down as a clue on their report”
“in a in a dui case for example some of the things that you might want to do while it's going on is if we decide that trying to get a favorable plea disposition is going to be the route that we want to go maybe you want to start taking some of the classes that are going to you know make it look better to the da and make it look better to the judge in a domestic violence case that's ongoing keeping records of any sort of communication between yourself and that you know significant other that was that was involved”
“colorado law says that the police must make an arrest if there's a probable cause in a db case”
“i literally just write down what the victim says in my report and it goes on the report and that's it um no no further investigation no sort of you know forensic questioning just whatever they say i'm taking for granted and it goes in my report”
“they were going to mark that down as a clue on their report”
“the earlier you can get an attorney in your criminal case the better”
“law enforcement are not equal investigators they they investigate pretty much one side of the story”
“i was pressured not to do that at the da's office i was pressured to do it this way and you know i actually just disencouraged from talking to other witnesses and getting both sides of the story”
“a lot of these domestic violence cases come up in the light of pending divorces”
“any attorney that comes in and promises you oh i know this is gonna how it's gonna go that's probably not the best advice”