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Two Colorado officials were convicted under the same felony statute — attempting to influence a public servant — and the cases ended very differently at the district court level. The contrast between former State Senator Sonya Jaquez Lewis and former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters is (rightly) fueling debate over prosecutorial discretion, count stacking, and whether Colorado’s system operates consistently.

Jaquez Lewis was prosecuted by the Denver District Attorney’s Office and convicted in Denver District Court of one count of attempting to influence a public servant (C.R.S. 18-8-306) and three counts of forgery. The charges stemmed from her submission of letters of support during a legislative ethics investigation; at least some of the letters were later determined to be forged.

Prosecutors did not charge separate influence counts for each member of the ethics committee. Instead, they charged one felony per forged document (three false statements/deceptive acts) to a single influence count tied to the proceeding — essentially treating the four-person ethics committee as one public official. 

The Senator’s crime was three false statements to four public officials — but it was charged as three false statements to one. For these four felonies, Jaquez Lewis was sentenced to two years of supervised probation, 150 hours of community service, and a fine. The democrat former Senator avoided prison. 

Now let’s consider Tina Peters, prosecuted in Mesa County’s 21st Judicial District. Peters was also convicted of four felony counts — three counts for attempting to influence a public servant and one felony for conspiracy to influence. In this case, prosecutors charged a single misrepresentation (one false statement/deceptive act) as separate attempts to influence three distinct public servants.

For Peters’ four felonies, she was sentenced to eight years and three months in Colorado prison, and she was immediately taken into custody at the conclusion of the hearing. She was denied bond pending appeal. She was given a few extra months for her misdemeanor counts, and was also given $10,750 in fines from the court.

Colorado’s influence statute criminalizes attempts to deceive a public servant regarding an official act. Jaquez-Lewis' lies attempted to influence the officials handling her ethics committee. Peters’ lie influenced the officials to allow her chosen expert to observe the trusted build after emergency “covid rules” restricted the official event to employees only.   

Colorado Appellate precedent — particularly People v. Knox (2019 COA 152) — permits multiple convictions under C.R.S. 18-8-306 when the conduct reflects separate “volitional departures,” such as distinct communications at different times. There is no statutory specification or controlling Colorado Supreme Court decision that defines the unit of prosecution under the that influence statute.  It’s a matter of prosecutorial discretion. 

In Jaquez-Lewis’s case, prosecutors used a proceeding-based theory for the influence charge and minimized multiplicity by treating the committee as a single official. In Peters’ case, prosecutors used a recipient-based theory and maximized multiplicity by treating each communication as a separate statutory violation. 

Both approaches are legally permissible under existing Colorado doctrine — but it’s the intent of the discretion that is curious. 

The influence counts were stacked per recipient in one case, not in the other. In the former, the statutory violations resulted in almost a decade of prison. In the latter, probation. 

Government maxis will say the different treatment comes down to the defendants’ level of repentance. 

That is, Peters’ case went to a contested jury trial, it resulted in a conviction and prison sentence, and the defendant continues to deny wrongdoing. In contrast, Lewis resigned but pleaded not guilty and proceeded to trial. She was convicted at trial and received probation and a fine.

Following trial, Jaquez-Lewis was repentant and apologized. Tina Peters continues to maintain her innocence from prison. 

Still, level of repentance isn’t the only difference between these two similarly situated cases.  There’s another. 

Jaquez-Lewis is a democrat whose alleged illegal conduct was in service of keeping her democrat seat of power in a system controlled at each level by democrats. Tina Peters is a republican whose alleged illegal conduct was in service of investigating legitimate concerns about how powerful people attain their seats of power in the first place.

Minimized punishment in the first instance, maximized punishment in the second. Based on prosecutorial discretion, overseen in both instances by an AG that is running for Governor. 

Of course, Colorado law allows flexibility in how influence counts are structured. That flexibility creates room for politicized, asymmetrical outcomes. 

It also creates room for gaslighting when people notice that the outcomes they call “justice” are asymmetrical when the case is political.

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