CO The Denver Post - Josh Rosales - 19 years behind bars murder before Denver DA reduces sentence
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TheDenverPost
An act of mercy freed Josh Rosales from life in a Colorado prison. Now he’s returning to the outside world.
Rosales spent 19 years behind bars for felony murder before Denver DA agreed to reduce his sentence
By Shelly Bradbury | sbra...@denverpost.com | The Denver Post
The longer your prison sentence, the more chains you wear.
So Joshua Rosales, sentenced to life in prison, had them all: ankle shackles, a belly chain, handcuffs. On the occasions when he was transferred from one Colorado prison to another, he sat chained up in the back of the bus.
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Though it was under no legal obligation to do so, the Denver District Attorney’s Office agreed to review Rosales’ case through its brand-new Conviction Review Unit, created in 2022 amid a surge of such units nationwide. The unit reviews cases in which defendants say they are innocent, as well as those in which defendants say they were punished too harshly under prior sentencing rules.
Rosales’ case was the first in which Denver prosecutors agreed to seek a reduced sentence, putting him into a small but growing group of people who are getting out of prison in the wake of wider criminal justice reform that followed the nationwide protests against police brutality in 2020. The Denver DA’s Conviction Review Unit has reduced 11 sentences so far, spokesman Matt Jablow said.
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