Author: Tom McGhee / Source: The Denver Post
An Araphoe County judge who sentenced two men for leading a mail theft operation, gave one of the men 10 years in prison. He sentenced the other to eight years in community corrections, which provides alternatives to incarceration.
District Judge F. Stephen Collins in February sentenced Sean Michael Jones, 36, of Denver to 10 years in prison.
Deputy District Attorney Steve Fauver asked the judge for a similar sentence for Alexander Winslow Arthur, 30, of Greenwood Village, on April 21. But Collins, who called Arthur “a master manipulator,” opted to keep him out of prison saying, “he will go in, have a bad experience and come out a worse person than when he went in.”
Collins’ didn’t extend that same mercy to Jones because he had several prior felonies. While he was jailed after being charged in the mail theft case, Jones also got into an altercation with a deputy, said Vikki Migoya, 18th Judicial District spokeswoman.
District Attorney George Brauchler said the more lenient sentence for Arthur demonstrates a need to modernize identity theft and financial crime statutes to reflect the damage they cause. Racketeering and financial crimes offenders do not face mandatory prison sentences regardless of the number of acts or amount of money stolen.
“When a person steals $100 from someone…
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