After four weeks of testimony, a Weld District Court jury took seven hours to convict John Sandoval of a 15-year-old murder in which no body was found and no murder weapon tied him to the crime, The Greeley Tribune reports.

Jurors faced him every day as they listened to witnesses describe how he stalked women and how he likely killed his wife and disposed of her body, while the defense worked to cast doubt on witness motives and memories.

In the end, the group of seven women and five men had no doubt.

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John Sandoval’s murder trial took a dramatic turn Thursday when his cousin, and his wife’s brief lover, painted a portrait of a man who would kill, The Greeley Tribune reported.

Jesse Martinez spent the afternoon on the stand in Weld District Court fielding questions from attorneys about his brief affair with Kristina Tournai-Sandoval that started about a month before she left her husband in August 1995. It was an affair very much kept under wraps.

“If he would have found out during that time, I wouldn’t be here right now,” Martinez said. “I understood her fear completely.”

In other Colorado courts coverage:

The Denver Post: A woman says she was raped by a Grand Junction police officer and has sued the city, claiming the Police Department knew of his propensity for violence but allowed him to continue his assignment on patrol. The woman filed her lawsuit in June in Mesa County District Court, but the case was moved to U.S. District Court in Denver on Wednesday.

Boulder Daily Camera: A 37-year-old Boulder woman sentenced in April to probation for fatally stabbing her husband was in court Thursday on suspicion of selling cigarettes to a minor. Traci Housman, who was sentenced to seven years probation and 400 hours of community service for killing her husband John Housman during a fight at their Boulder home early Aug. 2, works at a gas station in Boulder and was ticketed June 1 for selling to a minor.

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Jack Arbess

LAW WEEK COLORADO

DENVER — The trial of real-estate developer Jack Arbess for allegedly scamming investors out of $3.8 million ended last week in mistrial in Denver District Court, the Denver District Attorney’s office says.

Arbess was indicted by a Denver grand jury last year on 11 counts of theft and on charges of violating the Colorado Organized Crime Control Act, as reported by The Denver Daily News. He allegedly transferred money from a real estate project in Jefferson County to his own account for personal use, according to The Denver Business Journal.

The white-collar crime trial began a week ago today in the new Lindsey-Flanigan Courthouse. It was one of three felony trials to begin that day, which were the first in the courthouse that opened July 6.

Denver Chief Deputy DA Joe Morales led the prosecution; Gary Lozow of Isaacson Rosenbaum represented Arbess. But Judge Martin Engelhoff declared a mistrial due to juror misconduct. Denver DA spokeswoman Lynn Kimbrough said one of the 12 jurors was found to have made “inappropriate comments.” She could not elaborate.

A new trial date has not been set.

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The car of Kristina Tournai-Sandoval, who is presumed dead nearly 15 years, provides yet another small clue to the “massive puzzle” to her disappearance in October 1995, reports Sharon Dunn of the Greeley Tribune.

John Sandoval was arrested last year at his home in Las Vegas, and is accused of killing Tournai-Sandoval. Her body has never been found. The car “was found close to where her husband had been accused of breaking into a woman’s apartment to feed his voyeuristic tendencies,” Dunn reported. Witnesses testifying Monday and Tuesday said Tournai-Sandoval knew of her husband’s voyeurism and stalker-like behavior.

Public defenders argued that there were no signs of struggle, “blood or out-of-the ordinary fingerprints in either of the Sandovals’ homes or cars.”

Jurors are allowed to offer their own questions about the evidence. So far, they’ve submitted nine questions for police detective Clay Buckingham and four for other witnesses.

Read more of the Greeley Tribune’s live coverage of the Sandoval murder trial, which is in its first week, here.

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Rodney L. Jobe pleaded guilty last Friday to cultivating 374 marijuana plants on Friday in U.S. District Court in Denver, the Colorado Springs Gazette reports.

Jobe, of Green Mountain Falls, was growing inside a commercial building at 1351 Pecan St., Colorado Springs. The plants were being grown for a medical marijuana operation, said Jobe’s lawyer Kevin F. Donovan. The arrest did not arise from a recent series of searches conducted by police on marijuana growing operations, he said.

LAW WEEK COLORADO

Denver District Court Judge J. Stephen Phillips today announced his retirement, effective Nov. 30. Nominees to fill his vacancy will be interviewed by the 2nd Judicial District Nominating Commission in the Colorado Supreme Court conference room on Aug. 23. Gov. Bill Ritter makes the final selection.

The initial term of office of a district judge is a provisional term of two years, plus a term of six years if approved by the voters in judicial retention elections.

Applicants must be a registered voter in the district and must have been admitted to the practice of law in Colorado for five years. The current annual salary for this position is $128,598.

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Elinor Dvir

Opening statements were made Thursday for a murder-for-hire trial of a Denver woman accused of arranging the murder of her ex-husband, a deputy district attorney in Pitkin County, the Associated Press reports.

Jefferson County prosecutors say Elinor Dvir is guilty of entrapment when she “crossed the line between venting frustrations and committing a crime when she told an undercover investigator exactly what she wanted done to her husband.” She is accused of placing a hit on her husband in a desperate custody battle for her children.

This is Dvir’s second trial on solicitation of first-degree murder and other counts. Her first trial in March ended in a hung jury.

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Source: KDVR

Forty-five degrees. Any more than that and the angle at which a car seat reclines becomes unsafe.

So said experts in a lawsuit heard in federal court against Hyundai Motor Company, which resulted in a $1.8 million judgment in favor of the plaintiff — and possible ramifications for hundreds of millions of vehicles, according to The San Angelo Standard-Times.

The lawsuit was decided by a jury and concluded April 22, a little less than three years after Stu Goodner’s teenage daughter Sarah died in a car wreck. Sarah Goodner, 19, was wearing a seat belt when the crash happened, but she was thrown from the vehicle because her seat was reclined too far back.

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By Alicia McNally, LAW WEEK COLORADO
DENVER — District Judge William Hood awarded an Arapahoe County woman $4.8 million in a rare case involving a breach of a title insurance contract.

The bench trial lasted eight days, and the judge submitted his order on May 4.

Breach of a title insurance contract is rare because of its “retroactive” nature, said Katie Reilly and Larry Katz, both members of Denver law firm Jacobs Chase Frick Kleinkopf & Kelley. Title insurance is purchased with real estate to ensure that the property buyer, in short, “gets what he or she pays for” by investigating property history and deeds.

“Normally when you purchase something like health insurance, you insure problems that could happen in the future. When you buy title insurance, they investigate things that happen in the past,” Katz said. “Usually the insurance companies get it right, and there aren’t that many claims.”

Mary Scott purchased nearly 20 acres of property at 2501 South Monroe Lane, Cherry Hills Village, in September 2004. They intended to build their dream home on the land and also to separate it into six additional lots. Because the property was only accessible by South Monroe Lane, a “very winding dirt road” that ran over an easement belonging to Kent Denver School. Cherry Hills would only allow the Scotts to subdivide their property if the easement was more than 20 feet wide.

While in the process of purchasing the property, the Scotts wanted to make sure they could subdivide. There were deeds dating back to the 1940s with conflicting measurements of the road, one that measured 16 feet wide and one that measured 30. Chicago Title Insurance, who insured the Scotts, said they would cover them for both measurements.

“In Cherry Hills Village, there aren’t many open parcels of land,” Reilly said. “[The Scotts’ property] is much less valuable if it can’t be subdivided.”

The Scotts purchased the land and the title insurance with the understanding that they would be able to subdivide their property. But while heavily into the subdivision process, they found they were unable to do so. When they filed a claim, CTI “fought every step of the way,” said Reilly.

The bench trial lasted seven days. According to Hood’s order, CTI failed to pay a valid claim and failed to take action to solve the title problem in a reasonable period of time.

While Hood found CTI breached its contract, no punitive damages were awarded because the language of the deeds were too ambiguous to find proof of damages beyond reasonable doubt of willful misconduct.

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Christopher Bartkowicz was indicted by a federal grand jury late yesterday on charges of distribution and possession with intent to distribute 100 or more marijuana plants, regardless of weight, near a school.  Bartkowicz is free on a $10,000 secured property bond.

He was first charged by criminal complaint on Feb. 16 after the DEA conducted a consensual search at Bartkowicz’s residence.  Barkowicz later waived his right to indictment, and was charged by Information on March 5, 2010.  At a change of plea hearing on April 16, scheduled at the request of the defendant, Bartkowicz announced his intention to go to trial on the charges.  The grand jury then returned the three-count indictment yesterday.

Besides the charges of intent to distribute, between December 2009, and February 2010, Bartkowicz knowingly leased, rented, used and maintained a location intended for the purpose of manufacturing, distributing, and using marijuana.  More recently, Bartkowicz possessed 100 or more marijuana plants and with intent to distribute “dangerously” close to Sand Creek Elementary.

If convicted, he faces anywhere from five to 10 years in prison and up to a $2 million fine.