Colorado Springs DUI lawyer

Colorado calls the offense DUI, and it runs a second, lesser charge alongside it: DWAI, driving while ability impaired. Both are misdemeanors for a first, second or third offense; a fourth is a felony. The full ladder is on the Colorado DUI law page.

What is specific to Colorado Springs is the court system around it, and it is worth reading against Denver’s. Denver County Court describes itself as both a municipal and a state court, funded and staffed by the City and County of Denver. El Paso County Court is not like that: its pages, its bond hearing schedule and its DUI Court are published by the Colorado Judicial Branch, in a judicial district that takes in a second county. The prosecutor, the bond hearings and the DUI Court are all organised at district level, and that shapes the first weeks of a case.

Where a Colorado Springs DUI is heard

Both El Paso County trial courts sit in the El Paso County Judicial Building at 270 South Tejon Street. The District Attorney’s office describes the split: county courts handle misdemeanors, traffic infractions and felony complaints, which may be sent on to district court; district courts hear criminal cases along with civil, domestic, juvenile, probate and mental health matters. A first, second or third DUI is a County Court case. A fourth is a felony and belongs to the District Court.

Colorado Springs Municipal Court, at 224 East Kiowa Street, is a separate system. The city describes it as the court for violations of city ordinances and for city traffic summonses, and states that the most it can impose on a charge is a $2,500 fine and/or 189 days in jail. The city’s court and prosecution pages do not mention DUI at all, and this page does not guess at it. If the officer wrote a city summons at the same stop, that summons has its own date in its own building.

Parking at the Judicial Building

The Judicial Branch lists metered street parking around the building — the distance varies but is usually one to two blocks, and the meters accept coins or credit cards — and the Colorado Springs Parking Garage at 130 South Nevada Street. Calls to the building’s main number are answered Monday to Friday, 8am to 5pm.

The first seven days in El Paso County

An in-custody arrest goes to a bond hearing by video. The Judicial Branch publishes the schedule: in-custody video advisements Monday to Friday at 1:30pm, and on Saturday at 5pm for El Paso County and 4pm for Teller County. For someone already out on bond, the Branch’s pages do not agree: the bond hearing schedule gives out-of-custody advisements on Thursdays at 10am, while the El Paso County page says bonded advisements are held in Division DST on Fridays at 10am. The date on your own bond paperwork is the one to follow.

The license case runs on a much shorter clock, and in Colorado it is as short as any state on this site allows. After a test at or above the limit, or a refusal, the officer serves an express consent notice, and the request for a hearing has to reach the DMV within 7 days. The temporary permit ends on the same day and the revocation takes effect on it. Nothing filed in the Judicial Building on Tejon Street counts as that request; it goes to the agency, and a week passes quickly when the first of those days is spent in custody.

The District Attorney, and the DUI Court

The penalty ladder is statewide and is on the Colorado DUI law page. Two things about the 4th Judicial District are not statewide.

One prosecutor for two counties. The 4th Judicial District Attorney’s County Court Unit states that it prosecutes misdemeanor and traffic offenses in El Paso and Teller Counties, handling tens of thousands of such cases each year, with staff assigned to lettered divisions, the First Appearance Center and Fast Track. Felonies go to the District Court Unit, which states that it processes criminal dockets in 19 felony court divisions; the office reports 6,662 felony cases prosecuted in El Paso County in 2021 and 293 in Teller.

A DUI Court for felony cases. The El Paso County DUI Court started in June 2008. The Judicial Branch describes it as a program for high-risk, high-need repeat offenders, and its legal eligibility is specific:

• the charge being screened is a new felony DUI, or a felony DUI probation revocation based on technical violations with no new charges;
• the defendant lives in the 4th Judicial District and can be present there for the program;
• the defendant is probation eligible;
• there are no aggravators such as higher felony charges, vehicular assault, homicide, a serious accident or a significant criminal history, and no sex offense conviction requiring registration.

Judges and attorneys refer cases in, and final eligibility is decided after screening by probation and treatment. The program requires a minimum two-year probation sentence and runs in four supervised phases that take no less than 18 months, with therapy, recovery support, random alcohol and drug testing and regular court appearances. To graduate from Phase Four a participant needs at least 90 days without a sobriety monitoring violation and every financial obligation to the court paid.

That is a different thing from anything a first-offense case will see. For a misdemeanor DUI the questions are the ones on the state page: the reading, any prior, and the license.

DUI cases around Colorado Springs

El Paso County covers more than 2,158 square miles, and Colorado Springs is its county seat. A state DUI charged anywhere in the county comes to the same building; what changes the court is the charge level, the county line to the west, and whether a separate city summons was written.

The 4th Judicial District is two counties, El Paso and Teller. The District Attorney and the DUI Court program cover both; the courthouses do not.

Teller County is the practical edge case. It shares the judicial district and the District Attorney with El Paso County, but runs its own DUI Court — the Judicial Branch dates the Teller program to 2010, two years after El Paso’s — and holds its own Saturday bond advisement an hour earlier. It has its own court pages and its own court location, so the address on this page is not the one for a Teller arrest.

For the other Colorado city on this site, see Denver, where the county court itself is a city institution.

Common questions about Colorado Springs DUI cases