People of Colorado vs. Rabes, Erik Dean (continued)

Just over 3 years ago, I wrote a post about my wife Donna prosecuting a particularly nasty case of child pornography. The defendant, Erik Rabes, was charged with five counts: sexual assault on a child, sexual assault on a child by a person in a position of trust, two felony counts of sexual exploitation of a child, and a misdemeanor count of sexual exploitation of a child. It was the first ICAC (Internet Crimes Against Children) case that made it to trial in Colorado (usually the defendants in these kinds of cases plea out early). To summarize, Donna did a fantastic job prosecuting him and the jury found him guilty on all counts. He got two concurrent ten year sentences for the sexual assault counts, two consecutive 12-year sentences for the felony exploitation counts, and a concurrent 24 month sentence for the misdemeanor. Total elapsed time: 34 years.

Of course, what generally happens then is the defendant appeals the verdict on various grounds (here: search warrant, jury selection, consecutive vs concurrent, etc). Today the Colorado Court of Appeals, with a 20 page opinion written by Judge Webb, announced the result of their deliberation. Verdict: the conviction and the sentences were upheld.

(The only minor sticking point was that according to statute the maximum sentence for the misdemeanor should have been 18 months. The Court of Appeals vacated that sentence and the count has been remanded for resentencing. But then again the total jail time won’t change because of the resentencing anyway.)

As Donna says: “At this point, the case is considered “good law.”  The case is a published opinion and will give us some guidance in the area of ICAC cases.” She makes it into case law, FTW!

Mr Rabes is not going to get a retrial on this case. He stays exactly where he is. I’m not sorry at all.

  Loading links to posts on similar topics...

2 Responses

#1 Nick Hodges said...

23-Dec-10 9:13 PM

Please pass on my thanks and congratulations to your wife. Well done.

#2 julian m bucknall said...

23-Dec-10 10:50 PM

Nick: Thanks, I will do so.

Cheers, Julian

Leave a response

Note: some MarkDown is allowed, but HTML is not. Expand to show what's available.

•  Emphasize with italics: surround word with underscores _emphasis_
•  Emphasize strongly: surround word with double-asterisks **strong**
•  Link: surround text with square brackets, url with parentheses [text](url)
•  Inline code: surround text with backticks `IEnumerable`
•  Unordered list: start each line with an asterisk, space * an item
•  Ordered list: start each line with a digit, period, space 1. an item
•  Insert code block: start each line with four spaces
•  Insert blockquote: start each line with right-angle-bracket, space > Now is the time...

Name (required) Mail (will not be published) (required) Website Response Submit

Preview of response