West
Republican DA bucks blue state's 'broken sentencing' with tough-on-crime approach
A tough-on-crime Republican district attorney is using his years of prosecuting some of the most infamous cases in Colorado to crack down on crime across the blue state.
In January, George Brauchler became the first-ever district attorney for Colorado’s 23rd Judicial District, making it the first time in more than 60 years that Colorado added a new judicial district.
He previously served as DA for the 18th Judicial District, where he prosecuted some of the state’s biggest mass shooting cases, including at an Aurora movie theater and Columbine High School.
“I was a very young prosecutor when Columbine happened, and Columbine was the high school immediately to the south of where I graduated from high school,” Brauchler told Fox News Digital during an interview. “And so, when it occurred to be assigned to prosecute the felonies out of that, I thought at the time that would be the biggest, worst case I would ever handle, and I was wrong and that’s an amazing revelation to come to in this job.”
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George Brauchler, lead prosecutor in the case against convicted Colorado theater shooter James Holmes, responds to questions during an interview, Aug. 14, 2015, in Centennial, Colo. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
Soon after Brauchler was elected to a “broader version” of his current jurisdiction, the Aurora theater shooting case happened.
“A guy walked into a movie theater at about 2:25 in Alameda and tried to murder a theater full of people, and I ended up prosecuting that. We also ended up having a mass shooting here at a school at the end of my time in office. I was also asked to do the mock cross-examination of the victim in the Kobe Bryant rape case out of Vail back, I don’t know, almost 20 years ago now. It’s not anything you could really ever plan for. It’s just, you’re there. You always say yes,” Brauchler explained while reflecting on his earlier career.
“You end up developing a skill set and an expertise. And then you find yourself in a position to run for the first new district attorney’s office in over 60 years in Colorado. And you think, for whatever it’s worth, as humbly as I can put this, there just isn’t anybody that brings to this job right now the kind of experience that I have. And I hope to use it for the benefit of my community.”
Last month, Brauchler secured a rare first-degree murder conviction in a high-profile DUI case, which marked the first murder trial in Colorado’s newly formed 23rd Judicial District.
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The case involved Paul Stephenson, 57, who Brauchler said drank a bottle of Fireball and two beers before crashing into a minivan that was parked in Castle Rock last August.
“That case was so disturbing to me on a lot of levels,” Brauchler said.
Lt. Col. Matthew Anderson, a 39-year-old Air Force test pilot and father of four, was killed while pumping gas. His wife was inside the gas station store at the time of the crash. One of their children suffered a fractured skull and two others were also injured.
“On a Sunday afternoon, filling his car with gas while his wife goes to get the kids Popsicles, some two-time convicted drunk pours himself into a lifted Chevy Silverado, crosses five lanes of traffic, hops a curb, hits the accelerator to 98% and crushes that car at 45 miles an hour, injuring three of the kids and killing Lt. Col. Matt Anderson,” Brauchler said, describing the horrific scene that unfolded.
“In Colorado, the gut reaction charge would be, oh, that’s vehicular homicide. And that sounds horrible, but in Colorado, we have some of the weakest traffic laws in the country. So vehicular [homicide] would have only been punishable at most by 12 years in the Department of Corrections. Given our broken sentencing scheme, that guy would have been paroled in probably less than four years, and that seemed wholly unacceptable to me and everybody that looked at this case,” Brauchler continued.
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District Attorney George Brauchler talks to the media, May 18, 2016, after a plea hearing for retired Army Col. Eric Henderson, who was accused of hit-and-run, vehicular homicide and drunken driving resulting in the death of Colorado State Trooper Jaimie Jursevics in November 2015. (Andy Cross/Denver Post via Getty Images)
To ensure that justice was served, Brauchler said his office got a “little aggressive” and charged the driver with first-degree murder based on “extreme indifference.”
“We pursued it. And I’m not going to tell you it didn’t have risks. I’m not going to tell you that I didn’t have a pit in my stomach. But in about three and a half hours of deliberation after about a weeklong trial, the jury came back and said, ‘Yeah, guilty of first-degree murder,’ and we’re all pretty satisfied with that outcome,” Brauchler said.
Brauchler added what this case also highlighted was that he feels “we have lost sight of the purpose of the criminal justice system and taken our eye off the ball on day-to-day crimes,” like DUI.
“One thing about this is that there is no time of day, no road you can drive on that you can say, ‘Well, I’m safe from drunk drivers at this time on this road.’ My God, this was Sunday. On a road in the middle of Castle Rock, not a highway, on a road but across the street from the Douglas County Fair. If we don’t, I think, vigilantly attack this problem as much as any other, maybe more so, we’re going to see more of this, and this is the most preventable crime there is. This guy chose to risk people’s lives, and now he’s going to lose his freedom,” Brauchler said.
Brauchler said Anderson’s wife and children have recovered, but the ripple effects of witnessing the horrific scene are “still unknown as to how far they stretch through their lives.”
“How does seeing the violent death of their father in front of them, the way they saw him lying in the parking lot with a massive head injury, missing his leg above the ankle, how does that haunt them throughout the rest of their lives? I don’t think anybody knows,” Brauchler said.
Members of a police SWAT team march to Columbine High School on April 20, 1999. (AP/File)
“I have spoken with the widow many times. She is resilient and tough, but you can also see there’s something missing in her eyes. I don’t know how better to describe it, but I’ve seen it a lot with loss like this and that blue flame that flickers back there that tells you somebody’s fully engaged is just a little more diminished. It’s a little harder to see. And my hope for that family is that they can figure out a way to find happiness even without Col. Anderson.”
Tom Mustin, director of media relations for Brauchler’s office, told Fox News Digital that “typically, DUI cases lead to vehicular homicide charges, but this case set a new precedent and reflects DA Brauchler’s tough-on-crime approach that helped win him the office.”
“I don’t shy away from the description ‘tough on crime,’ but when did simply enforcing the law and having an expectation that there would be accountability for breaking it become ‘tough on [crime]?’” Brauchler said. “That just tells you how far we’ve shifted away from the idea of personal responsibility for criminal conduct. But I’m proud of the position we’ve taken. It’s been well-received everywhere. And I mean not just in our jurisdiction, but when I go to other jurisdictions.”
Brauchler, a Republican DA in the heavily blue Denver metro area, said Colorado has “taken such a sharp turn towards the progressive left that every other office is now dominated by Democrats,” which makes his position unique.
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A woman embraces her daughter after the Columbine High School shooting. (AP/File)
“I’ll tell you one thing that sticks out to me that’s odd is that I’ve made a real point of telling the public, even before I took office, we’re going to be an office that stands for the rule of law, and that if people come down here to steal from us or victimize us, they ought to expect to be incarcerated,” Brauchler said. “That message has been so overwhelmingly received and in a positive way, like people clap when I say that.”
Brauchler added that when he started working in his field 30 years ago and had this same messaging, it would have been a “yawn fest.”
“People would have been like, ‘Duh, that’s what prosecutors and police do.’ But that’s how far we’ve shifted in the other direction,” Brauchler said.
When asked about other high-profile cases like the Menendez brothers’ case in California, Brauchler said “there’s no good message that comes out of these two ever walking out of prison.”
“I remember when these cases happened, and I followed them like everybody else,” Brauchler said. “But this was a brutal, planned murder for the most selfish reasons possible. Anything they come up with at this point, by way of excuse, has already been air-dried in front of the jury and rejected when they were convicted. There’s no good message for America that comes out of these guys ever taking a free breath again.”
Brauchler said what is troubling about the Menendez brothers’ case being brought back up is that “every time something like this happens and someone sees any amount of success, it encourages others to do this.”
“You have to believe that there are any number of defense attorneys out there who are willing to shoot for the notoriety or the paycheck. In order to try to capture something like this, I’m not denigrating them. I know that’s business, but the answer should be that we should forget about the Menendez brothers.”
Brauchler said what the Menendez brothers’ case highlights is something that has been happening since the Aurora theater shooting that is amplifying killers.
“There has been a real concerted effort by decent people and many in the media to no longer amplify the killers; like, we should be focused on the victims. I would say since the Aurora theater shooter, I’ve said that guy’s name maybe four times through the whole trial, which lasted from Jan. 20th until April 7th, 2015. I said his name exactly twice. And that was by design,” Brauchler explained.
“And so here we are again, focused on the Menendez brothers and the Netflix things about the Menendez brothers. And I understand that, but we should really de-glorify the criminals and focus more on the victims and the crime that was committed. And I think that if you let these guys out, you do the opposite.”
Brauchler added that there are even studies now about the correlation between the amount of notoriety that a criminal gets and then copycat-type crimes.
“I’ll give you an example with Columbine. The STEM school mass shooting that I covered, both of those shooters had passing fascination with those Columbine shooters. We had a near-mass shooting at another high school right down the road from my kid’s high school. They both had a fascination with the Columbine shooters and the Aurora theater shooter. Guess which case he researched before he left his apartment back on July the 19th to go murder these people? Columbine. So, the more notorious an event or some people become, it does have an effect on other folks,” Brauchler said.
“I get it, we have to report the bad guy or bad girl at least once,” Brauchler continued. “Then after that, let’s not talk about them anymore. Let’s talk about the crime. Let’s talk about the victims, and let’s go to court.”
Stepheny Price is a writer for Fox News Digital and Fox Business. She covers topics including missing persons, homicides, national crime cases, illegal immigration, and more. Story tips and ideas can be sent to stepheny.price@fox.com
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Facing extreme drought in the wake of an exceptionally mild winter, officials in Colorado and Oregon have thrown up their hands and told anglers at some reservoirs: Catch all the fish you want, because they’re going to die anyway.
Conditions aren’t nearly so dire at two of Wyoming’s premier fishing reservoirs, Flaming Gorge in Sweetwater County and Boysen in Fremont County, where limits remain in place and the angling should remain good this summer, a state park manager and marina owner told Cowboy State Daily.
In northeastern Oregon, fishing limits were lifted on three reservoirs on the Powder River, a tributary of the Snake River, which originates in Wyoming.
Colorado is allowing unlimited angling on Antero Reservoir on the South Platte River in the central part of the state, and the Nee Noshe Reservoir to the southeast.
Utah has loosened catch limits on Crouse Reservoir, east of Salt Lake City, and Nine Mile Reservoir, south of the city.
In each instance, state agencies surmised reservoirs are getting so low and stagnant the fish are doomed regardless, according to numerous media reports.
No Emergency, Yet
Despite drought conditions across the state, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department doesn’t have “immediate plans to enact emergency regulations to liberalize creel limits,” according to fisheries management coordinator Mark Smith.
“However, conditions could change rapidly. If an emergency change to creel limits were to occur that information would be disseminated widely to the public and posted at the water for anglers to find,” Smith said in an email to Cowboy State Daily.
Some of Wyoming’s larger reservoirs have conservation pools, or “dead pools,” to act as buffers for fisheries when water is running low, Smith said.
Even so, “all stored water has limitations,” he added. The water at Flaming Gorge and Boysen is expected to drop enough to render some boat ramps useless.
So, Game and Fish is watching closely for a “tipping point” that might warrant a change in fishing regulations, Smith said.
Bad New For Small Waters
For smaller fisheries, the news isn’t quite so good.
“Ultimately, our goal is to protect all of our fisheries, but we recognize that some of our small waters have already been lost, or will be lost, to drying,” Smith said.
Sometimes that happens so fast there isn’t time to react, he said.
“For example, when we were finally able to access roads and assess small ponds in the 33 Mile country north of Casper this May, most of those fisheries had already succumbed to low water elevations and poor water-quality conditions,” Smith said.
“Other sagebrush stock-water reservoirs could face a similar fate,” he added.
Emergency regulations require the governor’s signature.
“Emergency regulations take effect immediately upon the Governor’s approval and would be lifted if conditions improved and fish were likely to survive,” Smith said.
Boysen Could Lose Boat Ramps
Boysen Reservoir has been roughly 70% full during June, Boysen State Park superintendent John Bass said.
Boysen is one of Wyoming’s top destinations for walleye, and also boasts good trout fishing.
Bass said he doesn’t anticipate the reservoir dropping to the point of mass fish die-offs or calls to lift all fishing limits.
According to Bureau of Reclamation estimates, Boysen will slowly fall, but remain above 50% capacity.
All four Boysen boat ramps are usable, he said. They are Bannon, Tough Creek, Fremont Bay and Cottonwood Bay.
“Although, as the lake starts falling, the Fremont and Cottonwood Ramps will be too shallow to use. But that’s a fairly common occurrence in my 10 years here,” Bass said. “The Brannon and Tough Creek boat ramps will be usable for the remainder of the year, until ice-up.”
‘The Marina Could Be Gone’
Likewise, there’s no reason to think officials will call for a free-for-all at Flaming Gorge, which straddles the Wyoming-Utah state line, Buckboard Marina owner Tony Valdez said.
“I don’t think we’ll be at the stagnant water level, where we could lose all of the fish,” he said.
Flaming Gorge draws anglers from all over the region for its prized kokanee salmon. It’s also known for lake trout and other species.
The Bureau of Reclamation this spring announced that Flaming Gorge is set for a million-acre-foot drawdown to make up for severe shortages downstream at Lake Powell, on the Utah-Arizona state line.
An acre foot is the amount of water that would flood an acre of land to the depth of one foot.
Valdez has previously expressed concerns the drawdown could ruin kokanee spawning areas. Kokanee are already under pressure because of competition with lake trout and burbot.
Wyoming Game and Fish and the Utah Division of Wildlife already lifted catch limits on smaller lake trout (under 28 inches) and burbot, in hopes of helping the kokanee.
Valdez said he doesn’t expect fishing limits to be suspended on any other species.
However, boat ramps could be rendered useless as the reservoir drops for the drawdown, he added.
Valdez said his marina could also tank this summer.
“This year, the marina could be gone. In fact, I’ve got to go deal with that right now, and move some stuff around (because of dropping water levels),” he said during a telephone interview with Cowboy State Daily.
Catfish Getting Scarce
Valdez said if there’s any danger of water dropping to fish-killing levels it would hit first upstream, at Fontenelle Reservoir.
“If it did get that low, the first one to go would be Fontenelle, then the Green (River) and then Flaming Gorge. But I don’t see it dropping that low,” he said.
Drought has ruined some of the fishing on the Blacks River, which feeds Flaming Gorge on the west side, Valdez said.
That river once was a hot spot for catfish, he noted.
“People still catch catfish near the confluence, more so in the lake than on the river. The river gets stagnant,” he said.
While Flaming Gorge is holding its own for now, the long-term picture could be stark.
During a Tuesday meeting in Denver, members of the Upper Colorado River Commission said conditions along the river system – which includes the Green River – are dire.
Wyoming state engineer Brandon Gebhart said it could be the worst year on record for the Colorado River basin.
Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.
Presidio Heights is proving to be a center of gravity as luxury housing supply in San Francisco vanishes and the city’s well-to-do scramble to claim their slice of the artificial intelligence industry’s nerve center.
On the same day last week, the city recorded two home sales in the wealthy neighborhood for $9.2 million and $10 million.
The first reflected the fortunes being created by the AI industry. Venture capitalist Kenneth Wallace and his wife, Moriah Lewis, sold their five-bed, 4,755-square-foot home at 3875 Clay Street for $9.2 million. Josh McAdam of Sotheby’s International Realty represented the seller. The property last sold for $6.8 million in 2021.
The buyer initially kept their name hidden behind a Delaware-incorporated LLC named after the property’s address. However, according to public loan documents, the LLC is managed by Daniel Berrios and Kimberly Tan, a couple in their early 30s who graduated from Stanford into the San Francisco tech sector. Berrios works on special projects at OpenAI, and Tan is an investing partner with blue chip venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. Wells Fargo Bank provided a $5.4 million loan for the purchase.
Ten blocks east, sellers Herbert and Shwu-Ling Wei sold their six-bed, 5,000 square-foot home at 2881 Jackson Street for $10 million. Kyle Vineyard, a CPA with Realize Tax Advisors, is the trustee of the buyer, RKLA Trust. It is unclear whether Vineyard’s involvement is purely professional or if he’s connected to the trust.
The home last sold in 2014 for $6.8 million.
Presidio Heights, the neighborhood that runs along Presidio Park at San Francisco’s north end, has experienced a hot streak during the first half of 2026. Earlier this month, two mansions in the area sold for a combined $32 million, marking the fourth and fifth sales this year to eclipse $10 million. There were seven sales above that benchmark in Presidio Heights in all of 2025, according to Zillow data.
San Francisco, where the median home sale fetches $2.2 million, is dealing with its own version of champagne problems: a mansion shortage. The AI boom has attracted a wave of high-paid employees, apparently leaving the city with more millionaires than mansions. Steep capital gains taxes have made some mansion owners hesitant to let go of their property. Others are holding out for the expected spike in luxury home demand following Anthropic and OpenAI’s initial public offerings of stock, which are expected to come later this year.
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Denver, CO
Denver Transplant Games sets Guinness World Record for most living donors, recipients in one place at one time
DENVER — The biennial Transplant Games wrapped up in Denver this week, bringing hundreds of organ donors and recipients together to compete in everything from cycling and swimming to darts and trivia at venues all over the city.
In fact, the games set a Guinness World Record for most living donors and recipients in one place at one time, with 966 gathering at the Colorado Convention Center.
PREVIOUS COVERAGE: Transplant Games bringing competition, life-saving message to Denver
Angela Laino, who used to live in Boulder, came back to Colorado to compete in the games. She donated a kidney to a stranger in January before running in the 5K event.
“I’m what they call a non-directed living kidney donor, which means that I don’t know who my recipient was,” she explained. “So I just said, ‘Whoever needs my kidney, I’m sure they’ll find the best match for it.’”
- Watch the full story in the video player below.
Transplant Games in Denver sets Guinness World Record
Laino said she was inspired by her job, working “on and off” as a dialysis social worker for 17 years.
“I really saw the challenges that my patients faced,” she said. “I saw what they had to go through to get on the [transplant] wait list… I know what transplant means for people. I’ve seen it firsthand. And to be able to see them come out here, compete, they’re doing basketball, they’re doing badminton, they’re swimming, they’re cycling, they’re running. They are living their full lives, and that’s really what transplant can do for people.”
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Laino said the games unite the community and show off its resilience.
“When you go through the transplant process, sometimes you feel alone, you feel like you’re the only one going through this,” Laino said. “And then you come to an event like this and you literally see thousands of people. You see recipients, living donors, donor families coming together for the same cause. It’s really inspiring, because it really helps to get the word out, spread awareness about the organ shortage, and it shows people what recipients and donors can do after they have the surgery.”
Dr. Michael O’Shea — a nephrologist, a doctor who cares for kidney disease patients and the kidneys in general — agrees. But he said more needs to be down to support patients and spread the word about the need for organ donations.
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The National Kidney Foundation estimates 37 million Americans have Chronic Kidney Disease, which occurs when kidneys cannot filter the blood properly, leading to serious health issues. Because symptoms can be minimal in early stages of the disease, many patients don’t realize they have it.
“I think education about kidney transplant, both on the patient side as well as on the potential donor side, could be markedly ramped up and improved,” Dr. O’Shea said. “It’s struggles with communication between transplant centers, patients, and community nephrologists. No one’s fault. It’s just a very complicated delivery system.”
In the case of kidneys, people can become diseased donors — who register to donate in the case of their sudden death — or living donors, who donate one kidney will relying on the other. Dr. O’Shea said both are critical to meet nationwide demand for life-saving transplants, though the living donations tend to have a longer lifespan — around roughly 20 years — for recipients.
“A number of folks get transplanted every year off this list,” O’Shea explained. “It is also true that a greater number of folks get added to the list every year.”
To register to become a deceased donor, Coloradans can visit their local Department of Motor Vehicles office or visit registerme.org.
O’Shea said those considering living donations face an “exceedingly small” medical risk for end-stage kidney disease, but should consult with their doctor about the decision.
Even as the games leave Denver, a reminder will stick around through the summer. Denver Parks and Recreation, the Downtown Denver Partnership and DaVita have partnered to set up a basketball court in Skyline Park near Arapahoe and 17th Streets, in order to keep the spirit of the games alive and honor the resilience of organ donors, recipients and their families.
Denver7 | Your Voice: Get in touch with Ryan Fish
Denver7’s Ryan Fish covers stories that have an impact in all of Colorado’s communities, but specializes in covering artificial intelligence, technology, aviation and space. If you’d like to get in touch with Ryan, fill out the form below to send him an email.
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