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The following is a list of events of the year 2023 in Colorado .
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The following is a list of events of the year 2023 in Colorado .
Disbarment, also known as striking off, is the removal of a lawyer from a bar association or the practice of law, thus revoking their law license or admission to practice law. Disbarment is usually a punishment for unethical or criminal conduct but may also be imposed for incompetence or incapacity. Procedures vary depending on the law society; temporary disbarment may be called suspension.
The Edmunds Act, also known as the Edmunds Anti-Polygamy Act of 1882, is a United States federal statute, signed into law on March 23, 1882 by President Chester A. Arthur, declaring polygamy a felony in federal territories, punishable by "a fine of not more than five hundred dollars and by imprisonment for a term of not more than five years". The act is named for U.S. Senator George F. Edmunds of Vermont. The Edmunds Act also prohibited "bigamous" or "unlawful cohabitation", thus removing the need to prove that actual marriages had occurred. The act not only reinforced the 1862 Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act but also made the offense of unlawful cohabitation much easier to prove than polygamy misdemeanor and made it illegal for polygamists or cohabitants to vote, hold public office, or serve on juries in federal territories.
Oath Keepers is an American far-right anti-government militia whose leaders have been convicted of violently opposing the government of the United States, including the transfer of presidential power as prescribed by the United States constitution. It was incorporated in 2009 by founder Elmer Stewart Rhodes, a lawyer and former paratrooper. In 2023, Rhodes was sentenced to 18 years for seditious conspiracy for his role in the January 6 United States Capitol attack, and another Oath Keepers leader, Kelly Meggs, was sentenced to 12 years for the same crime. Three other members have pleaded guilty to this crime, and four other members have been convicted of it.
The shooting deaths of Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams, two Black American individuals, occurred in East Cleveland, Ohio on November 29, 2012, at the conclusion of a 22-minute police chase which started in downtown Cleveland, when police erroneously claimed shots were fired at them as Russell and Williams drove by a squad car; the cause of the shots was their vehicle's exhaust pipe backfiring.
This section of the timeline of United States history includes major events from 2010 to the present.
Jena Marie Griswold is an American attorney and politician from the state of Colorado. A Democrat, she is the 39th Colorado Secretary of State, serving since January 8, 2019.
Ronil Singh was a Fijian-born American police officer who was shot and killed on the morning of December 26, 2018, in Newman, California, by a driver he had pulled over on suspicion of driving while drunk. Paulo Mendoza, a 31-year-old Mexican illegal immigrant, was arrested three days later. Prior to his arrest for the murder of Singh, Mendoza was found guilty of multiple offenses.
Elijah Jovan McClain was a 23-year-old American Black man from Aurora, Colorado, who was killed as a result of being illegally injected with 500 mg of ketamine by paramedics after being forcibly detained by police officers. He went into cardiac arrest and died six days later in the hospital. He had been walking home from a convenience store. Three police officers and two paramedics were charged with his death. Both paramedics and one of the officers were convicted of negligent homicide. The other two officers were acquitted of all charges.
Jenna Lynn Ellis is an American conservative lawyer who was a member of Donald Trump's 2020 re-election campaign's legal team. She is a former deputy district attorney in Weld County, Colorado. During the Trump presidency, she presented herself as a "constitutional law attorney" during cable news appearances, though The New York Times reported that her background did not reflect such expertise and The Wall Street Journal reported that she had no history in any federal cases.
On January 6, 2021, supporters of Donald Trump attacked the U.S. Capitol building, disrupting the joint session of Congress assembled to count electoral votes to formalize Biden's victory in the 2020 United States presidential election. By the end of the month, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had opened more than 400 case files and issued more than 500 subpoenas and search warrants related to the riot. The FBI also created a website to solicit tips from the public specifically related to the riot, and were especially assisted by the crowdsourced sleuthing group Sedition Hunters. By the end of 2021, 725 people had been charged with federal crimes. That number rose to 1,000 by the second anniversary of the attack, and to 1,200 by the third anniversary, at which point over 890 people had been found guilty of federal crimes. These federal cases are handled by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia (D.C.). State cases, of which there are fewer, are handled in the D.C. Superior Court.
Alvin Leonard Bragg Jr. is an American politician and lawyer who serves as the New York County District Attorney, covering Manhattan. In 2021, he became the first African American elected to that office. Bragg had previously served as Chief Deputy Attorney General of New York and as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York. In 2024, he became the first and only district attorney to secure a conviction of a former United States president.
Corruptly obstructing, influencing, or impeding an official proceeding is a felony under U.S. federal law. It was enacted as part of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002 in reaction to the Enron scandal, and closed a legal loophole on who could be charged with evidence tampering by defining the new crime very broadly.
Tina Marie Peters is an American former election official. She served as County Clerk of Mesa County, Colorado, from 2019 to 2023, although in 2021 she was temporarily suspended by the Colorado secretary of state. Peters is the first election official in the U.S. convicted of criminal charges related to efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election predicated on conspiracy theories regarding the legitimacy of Donald Trump's defeat. In August 2024, she was convicted on seven charges — four of which were felonies — relating to unauthorized access to election machines. She was subsequently sentenced to nine years of incarceration.
The killing of Christian Glass occurred on June 11, 2022, in Clear Creek County, Colorado, near the town of Silver Plume, at approximately 12:30 am. Glass, aged 22, was driving alone in a vehicle in the evening of June 10 when the vehicle went off the road. Unable to get it back on the road, he called 911 for help at approximately 11:20 pm, June 10. When the police arrived, Glass may have had some form of mental distress, and refused to get out of the vehicle. When a police officer, with weapon drawn, asked him why not, he replied "Sir, I'm terrified."
In 2023, four criminal indictments were filed against Donald Trump, former president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. Two indictments are on state charges and two indictments are on federal charges.
Juan Manuel Merchan is a Colombian-born American judge and former prosecutor. He is an acting justice of the New York State Supreme Court in New York County (Manhattan). He presided over the 2024 criminal trial of former US president Donald Trump, in which Trump was convicted. Merchan is the first judge in history to preside over the criminal indictment and conviction of a US President, and the first judge to hold a President in criminal contempt of court.