Colorado Statutes relating to JonBenet Ramsey’s death

otg said:

Wow. Several related issues coming in here that I'll try to group together and answer. I’m not sure if I can adequately explain everything with my paltry understanding, and I don't claim to know any more than anyone else who reads the Colorado Statutes. But here goes:

There are different crimes which have different age restrictions that define how they are classified. As I understand, sexual assault has no age limit on the perpetrator (the laws seem to refer to him/her as the “actor”, the one who commits the act). But here again, as with other laws, even though a person under a specified age (10) is considered incapable of criminal intent and therefore unable to be held responsible, the laws specifically state that this doesn’t preclude one from being able to commit an act which is prohibited by law (I hope that makes sense the way I worded it, because it’s important in understanding what can and cannot be prosecuted.)

Since we (and the laws) recognize that someone under a certain age is unable to understand the consequences of their actions, the laws protect them (the victim(s)) from being coerced into doing something that an adult might otherwise be able to avoid. This is where a crime like Statutory Rape would apply, saying that even though a minor might have given his/her permission for something, the law doesn’t recognize their ability to make an adequately “informed consent”. And then, the Colorado Statutes go further in classifying even younger ages than 18 (I think 16 and 12 are specifically referred to) as particularly egregious, and they also give age differences (4 and 10) as being what would constitute those particular elements of the crime.

I believe (as QFT mentions above) that besides murder, certain crimes against children are the only other felonies that have no SoL (this due to a child later reaching an age at which they can be expected to remember things that happened to them as a child that they know as an adult was wrong).

As for the members of a GJ being confused about the laws that apply, I would think that this is why (one of the reasons anyway) a GJ will have someone from the DA’s office “lead” the process. In the case of the RGJ, that job fell on the shoulders of Michael Kane. Obviously members of the community called on to serve would not be familiar with the applicable laws. And we must know that it was not one of the jurors who wrote up the True Bills referring to the applicable statutes. So I don’t think I would go so far as to say that it’s very likely that this (or any) GJ was confused about the laws. Kane was there to explain anything they had a question on.





It makes “absolutely no sense” unless you consider who that third person might have been. That is why even some attorneys and other talking heads keep saying they don’t understand what the GJ was thinking (they just "don't want to go there, Pal."). It just makes absolutely no sense any other way you look at it. I think the RGJ actually did figure out what happened. I think that's one more reason you don't hear any of them speaking out. What good would come of it? There is only person who can still be charged with anything associated with what happened, and in order to prosecute him, the details of what happened would mean ruining the life of someone else who was too young to understand the consequences of what he was doing.

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otg said:

Wow. Several related issues coming in here that I'll try to group together and answer. I’m not sure if I can adequately explain everything with my paltry understanding, and I don't claim to know any more than anyone else who reads the Colorado Statutes. But here goes:

There are different crimes which have different age restrictions that define how they are classified. As I understand, sexual assault has no age limit on the perpetrator (the laws seem to refer to him/her as the “actor”, the one who commits the act). But here again, as with other laws, even though a person under a specified age (10) is considered incapable of criminal intent and therefore unable to be held responsible, the laws specifically state that this doesn’t preclude one from being able to commit an act which is prohibited by law (I hope that makes sense the way I worded it, because it’s important in understanding what can and cannot be prosecuted.)
. . .

It makes “absolutely no sense” unless you consider who that third person might have been. That is why even some attorneys and other talking heads keep saying they don’t understand what the GJ was thinking (they just "don't want to go there, Pal."). It just makes absolutely no sense any other way you look at it. I think the RGJ actually did figure out what happened. I think that's one more reason you don't hear any of them speaking out. What good would come of it? There is only person who can still be charged with anything associated with what happened, and in order to prosecute him, the details of what happened would mean ruining the life of someone else who was too young to understand the consequences of what he was doing.

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bettybaby00 said:

I've asked this before, and I know the specific statute regarding the under 10 issue was posted, but I can't help but wonder why in case like this that it can't ever be considered "solved," or "closed." Meaning that, a determination is made, either by evidence or through a confession which would declare the case solved but unprosecutable due to the the age of the perpetrator.



I find it hard to believe or understand why it's not possible for the court to do this.



If this were to happen, and the public drew a conclusion of who was being referenced, it's not the fault of the court b/c they never specifically mentioned anyone by name.



Idk if the law specifically prohibits this, or if in this case, somehow they were able to legally subvert this?

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lawstudent said:

Re: the first part, are you saying that while minors can't be prosecuted, the act still constitutes legal sexual assault and/or murder in violation of the law? I'm not quite sure how that can work without the ability to charge or convict.

Re: the second part, I still don't think it makes sense. If the grand jury thought Burke did it, it still wouldn't be murder, in my understanding. Felony murder or regular murder. Because he didn't have the intent necessary due to his age. So how can the parents be indicted for helping that? No matter who the third person is, it makes no sense to not indict for murder and then indict for accessory. If the person is legally not responsible, they did not commit murder or a felony that led to a killing that would be considered murder, because that's a legal definition.

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otg said:

The second possibility of the Grand Jury’s reasoning could be that they felt another third party was responsible for the act which caused her death, and that individual could not be held criminally responsible. However, the Ramsey parents would still be held ultimately responsible. Obviously, we are speaking here about the possibility that their son Burke committed the act which caused his sister’s death. Since at the time of the crime, he was 9 years old, in the eyes of Colorado law he was incapable of forming criminal intent. However, that does not mean that an adult who acts as an accessory cannot be charged. Applicable Annotations from C.R.S. 18-1-801 (Insufficient age) state the following:

Although a child under the age of 10 cannot be charged with an offense, it does not necessarily follow that the child cannot violate the law. In enacting the statute, the general assembly determined those persons who could be held responsible for their criminal acts, not that such persons could not commit the acts. People v. Miller, 830 P.2d 1092, (Colo. App. 1991).
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The reference to People v. Miller, 830 P.2d 1092 (http://www.leagle.com/decision/19911...%20v.%20MILLER) was from a case in which a parent appealed her conviction of Contributing the Delinquency of a Minor because the child was too young to be charged with a crime (theft). No doubt you know this case, but I’ll briefly describe it. From that Appeals Court opinion:

Miller first contends that the trial court erred in denying her motion for judgment of acquittal on the charge of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. She asserts that her eight-year-old son was not charged with theft because a child under the age of ten cannot be charged and convicted of any offense. Section 18-1-801, C.R.S. (1986 Repl.Vol. 8B). Thus, according to Miller, since it was impossible for her son to violate any state law, she cannot be found guilty of contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
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The Appeals Court’s decision states:

Here, the language of the statute is clear and unambiguous. The General Assembly is concerned with adults who encourage children under eighteen to commit crimes. The statute does not require that the minor be charged or convicted of a crime nor does it require the minor to be over the age of ten.

Further, Miller's reliance on § 18-1-801 is misplaced. Although a child under the age of ten cannot be charged with an offense, it does not necessarily follow that the child cannot violate the law. Rather, in enacting § 18-1-801, the General Assembly determined those persons who could be held responsible for their criminal acts. It did not determine that such persons could not commit the acts themselves. Cf. Thompson v. Oklahoma, 487 U.S. 815, 108 S.Ct. 2687, 101 L.Ed.2d 702 (1988). We therefore conclude that even though Miller's son was only eight years old at the time of her offense, Miller could be found guilty of contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
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And in C.R.S. 18-6-701 (Contributing to the delinquency of a minor), Annotations, it states:

An adult may be charged with violating this statute regardless of whether the minor was actually charged with or convicted of a crime or whether the minor was old enough to be charged with or convicted of a crime. People v. Miller, 830 P.2d 1092 (Colo. App. 1991).
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lawstudent said:

And, while the D.A. may have been there to explain things, we see juries in trials come to very weird verdicts not in line with the law all the time - even with the judge's instructions and questions, etc. Sometimes it has more to do with their idea of what is right - so it may indeed indicate they thought the Ramseys were guilty and deserved to be punished even though it wasn't legally murder, but it still doesn't make sense legally.

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UKGuy said:

otg,
And that concludes the case for the prosecution my Lord!

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bettybaby00 said:

I've asked this before, and I know the specific statute regarding the under 10 issue was posted, but I can't help but wonder why in case like this that it can't ever be considered "solved," or "closed." Meaning that, a determination is made, either by evidence or through a confession which would declare the case solved but unprosecutable due to the the age of the perpetrator.

I find it hard to believe or understand why it's not possible for the court to do this.

If this were to happen, and the public drew a conclusion of who was being referenced, it's not the fault of the court b/c they never specifically mentioned anyone by name.

Idk if the law specifically prohibits this, or if in this case, somehow they were able to legally subvert this?

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Linda7NJ said:

The law doesn't allow this.

The Colorado Children's Code permits blatant lies protecting the under age 10 minor child.

And Lord knows, we've been full a load of them ....by everyone...
The law allows Mary Lacy to lie and publicly exonerate the Ramsey's. IMO that's the closest to ending it we are ever gonna come.


IMO

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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otg said:

I think :waitasec:, it wouldn't be up to the court to declare anything unless it is in regards to a case that was presented to it. That would leave declaring the case "solved" to the DA's office (and I don't think that's gonna happen). If the DA took the bold step of making such a declaration, it would require some sort of explanation (much like Lacy once did). And what would that explanation accomplish? Nothing good, IMO. So we can speculate on and on about what we think, but don't look for any such declaration in our lifetimes. I'm just trying to be realistic and face the fact that I think most people who are in such a position to know, do, and aren't going to pursue it.

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otg said:

:floorlaugh:
Is that, "my Lord", as in OMG? Or as in, "m' Lord"?

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bettybaby00 said:

So I'm guessing you're going with the "the Rs were able to subvert the system?"



Which implies, to me anyway, if it had been another kid, another family, this case might have been "resolved?"

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Linda7NJ said:

If it were another kid and another family. It would have been solved within days. The Ramsey's would have been separated and interviewed. They certainly would not have been handled with kid gloves!
IMO


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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otg said:

(all bbm)Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying -- and that's exactly what the Colorado Statutes state specifically. From my first post in this thread:
It does make sense -- perfect sense, legally. But only if you are willing to consider that a child is capable of committing an act for which he/she cannot be held criminally liable, as the Colorado Statutes state (unambiguously).

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lawstudent said:

I see the point you are making, and it would make sense if you are right.

The way I read that case though is they emphasized the word "encouraged" the illegal act, which she clearly did, and so it was more about her charge for trying to get a child to do something illegal, whether he could be charged or not. He obviously still took the stuff illegally, but I don't know if you would then say he had committed theft. Like there has to be some way to delineate that they did do the crime but aren't being prosecuted - otherwise it just seems unfair because they can't even clear their names. This kid obviously took stuff illegally, but had he been charged, he may have been acquitted based on a defense that his mom had told him it was ok and he did not realize she hadn't paid or something. Or, more likely, prosecutors would have had him plead to a lower charge. He wouldn't be convicted of theft, most likely. Theft is the crime - he did unlawfully take something - but I don't think he would be considered to have engaged in theft. i dont know - it's so confusing. I don't see how you can have a child who can't be charged or prosecuted with these crimes be considered to have committed murder. There are so many elements of murder, and different types, and it would require so much analysis of intent and all that. Without a definitive conviction, I don't see how the parents could be accessories. When you help someone cover up a killing, you don't know that it's a murder yet because the person may get convicted of some other crime depending on the circumstances. You have to wait until the charges come down. Encouraging him to commit one of those crimes would make mores sense legally because that doesn't have to do with figuring out what actually happened - if they encouraged him to do something, whether or not he could have been prosecuted, they had no right to do so - hence the delinquency case. But accessory to a murder just seems weird to me if what the kid did is not considered a murder but rather probably an unlawful killing.

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lawstudent said:

I see the point you are making, and it would make sense if you are right.

The way I read that case though is they emphasized the word "encouraged" the illegal act, which she clearly did, and so it was more about her charge for trying to get a child to do something illegal, whether he could be charged or not. He obviously still took the stuff illegally, but I don't know if you would then say he had committed theft. Like there has to be some way to delineate that they did do the crime but aren't being prosecuted - otherwise it just seems unfair because they can't even clear their names. This kid obviously took stuff illegally, but had he been charged, he may have been acquitted based on a defense that his mom had told him it was ok and he did not realize she hadn't paid or something. Or, more likely, prosecutors would have had him plead to a lower charge. He wouldn't be convicted of theft, most likely. Theft is the crime - he did unlawfully take something - but I don't think he would be considered to have engaged in theft. i dont know - it's so confusing. I don't see how you can have a child who can't be charged or prosecuted with these crimes be considered to have committed murder. There are so many elements of murder, and different types, and it would require so much analysis of intent and all that. Without a definitive conviction, I don't see how the parents could be accessories. When you help someone cover up a killing, you don't know that it's a murder yet because the person may get convicted of some other crime depending on the circumstances. You have to wait until the charges come down. Encouraging him to commit one of those crimes would make mores sense legally because that doesn't have to do with figuring out what actually happened - if they encouraged him to do something, whether or not he could have been prosecuted, they had no right to do so - hence the delinquency case. But accessory to a murder just seems weird to me if what the kid did is not considered a murder but rather probably an unlawful killing.

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otg said:

With all due respect, you are confusing the terms used in the cited case precedence with the alleged crimes to which it is being applied. In People v. Miller, the illegal act committed was theft, and the mother was charged with having “encouraged” her son (a child under 10) to commit it. Actually, if you read the circumstances, it sounds more like the child was only used as a vehicle for the mother to conceal and transport the computer games out of the store. The child (understandably) didn’t necessarily even know what the mother was doing. Indeed, as the law attempts to account for, he was unable to “possess criminal intent” because he was too young to know that what his mother was doing was wrong. So even though he transported the merchandise out of the store, he did so because of his mother’s “encouragement”. She was charged with Contributing to the Delinquency of a Minor (C.R.S. 18-6-701):

(1) Any person who induces, aids, or encourages a child to violate any federal or state law, municipal or county ordinance, or court order commits contributing to the delinquency of a minor. For the purposes of this section, the term "child" means any person under the age of eighteen years.
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That Appeal Court’s ruling said (among other things):

Although a child under the age of ten cannot be charged with an offense, it does not necessarily follow that the child cannot violate the law.
​

So the decision on principle in this case was used and applied as a precedent to other laws. It is stated in the Annotations in C.R.S. 18-1-801 (Insufficient age) exactly as the decision is stated within that Annotation:

Although a child under the age of 10 cannot be charged with an offense, it does not necessarily follow that the child cannot violate the law. In enacting the statute, the general assembly determined those persons who could be held responsible for their criminal acts, not that such persons could not commit the acts. People v. Miller, 830 P.2d 1092, (Colo. App. 1991).
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This principle creates that quirky aspect of Colorado laws where a child under 10 cannot even be charged with violating the law. Miller tried in her case to say that if her son couldn’t be charged with violating the law, she didn’t “encourage” him to violate it. This may be a clever defense based on that technicality, but the court obviously had to close that loophole in order to hold adults accountable for what they might do.

So as this applies to the Ramsey case, it means that even though Burke (a child under the age of 10) could not be charged with any violation of the law, the adults responsible for allowing the situation in which it occurred are still responsible for their actions. Their action (in this case) was not “encouragement”, but rather “rendering assistance” after the fact. From C.R.S. 18-8-105 (Accessory to crime - Obstruction of Public Justice):

(1) A person is an accessory to crime if, with intent to hinder, delay, or prevent the discovery, detection, apprehension, prosecution, conviction, or punishment of another for the commission of a crime, he renders assistance to such person.
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From the RGJ true bill (Count VII):

On or about December 25, and December 26, 1996 in Boulder County, Colorado, John Bennett Ramsey (or alternately, Patricia Paugh Ramsey) did unlawfully, knowingly and feloniously render assistance to a person, with intent to hinder, delay and prevent the discovery, detention, apprehension, prosecution, conviction and punishment of such person for the commission of a crime, knowing the person being assisted has committed and was suspected of the crime of Murder in the First Degree and Child Abuse Resulting in Death.
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The parents knew there was a crime that had happened. While they probably didn’t know the technicalities of exactly which crime was committed, they did know there was a dead, sexually abused child in their house; and the GJ apparently believed they had covered up for (rendered assistance to) the person who caused it, even though that person was immune from prosecution.

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bettybaby00 said:

Makes a hella lot of sense to me. Here's another question.....

The DA is the one responsible for "presenting the charges to the GJ," right? ( I'm quoting the language used in one of the articles covering the news of the TBs, b/c I'm never confident in my knowledge to word things correctly)

So my question is this: when does the DA actually "present the charges" to the GJ? Is it done going in, or is it done after all evidence and testimony has been presented to the grand jurors?

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I do not know why Judge Lowenthal chose to release only those portions of the indictment that he did. There is really not much law in Colorado about the status of grand jury materials when the GJ votes to indict but the DA chooses not to prosecute. He may have felt that the partial release was a reasonable compromise between the competing arguments for total secrecy and total disclosure. But only he knows why he ruled precisely the way he did.

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otg said:

I'm not a lawyer, and I've never been on a Grand Jury. But I think the process would be similar to other cases presented to a jury. In a regular court case, after presentation of all evidence to the jury, the judge issues instructions to the jury which enumerate the possible charges (most of the time with instructions on exactly what they need to decide). It is then left to the jury members to vote on each of the possible charges and return the verdict.

I imagine the procedure in a GJ would be very similar. The DA's representative (Mike Kane) would lead them through the investigation even though decisions are still made by the GJ. At the end of the proceedings, based on what he (Kane) and they discover, all developed possible charges would then be written by Kane (based on Colorado Statutes) and presented to the jury for their vote. We know, based on what Judge Lowenbach wrote in his decision, that there were 9 possible charges that were voted on. Unless the voted down charges are ever released (which I believe should have been since they were all signed by the Jury Foreman and are therefore "official actions" as defined by him), we'll never know what those other considered charges were.

One of the questions I had for my lawyer friend was about whether or not (in his opinion) as "official actions", the "No True Bill" counts should not have also been made public. The answer I got was as follows:
In my opinion (as I had said on another thread) the reason John Ramsey's attorney (Hal Haddon) wrote the judge asking that all proceedings be made public if only portions were to be released, was to try and tie them both together (knowing that the rest of the GJ proceedings could not be made public because of secrecy rules). While this tactic didn't prevent the TBs from being released, it may have been an influence on keeping the judge from releasing the other charges that were not voted up. (All, my opinion only.)

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bettybaby00 said:

BBM, that's my question. In a criminal trial, the charges are known before the case goes before a jury. From what you've posted, it seems with regard to GJ proceedings, the DA draws up possible charges after all evidence and testimony is heard. I find that interesting as it would seem the charges are based on where the evidence leads, rather than trying to make a case for the charges that have already been filed, which is what happens in a criminal trial.

Am I making sense???

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Haddon's BS request for everything to be released is IMO just more sideshow tactics. He knew that would never happen. Your linked post makes a compelling argument that the Rs team were once again attempting to influence the outcome in their favor, and we'll never know for sure if it did in fact influence the decision regarding what was and what wasn't released.

Oh and clearly it was another opportunity to waive that "exoneration" around! :banghead:

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Has CB ever indicated that he would continue to fight for the release of the other
TBs?

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