Where it all started…

It was 2008, and life for Shawnee Ryan was good.  She had her own interior design business in downtown Glenwood Springs, Colorado and sported an impressive client list and was, by all measures, very successful.  She had three grown children, with her youngest, Alex, attending college at CU Boulder on a full academic scholarship.  Shawnee was active in the community.  She was a hard-working single parent making her way in a challenging yet booming rural Colorado mountain resort community.

Fast forward four years, and we have a completely different reality for Shawnee Ryan.  There have been numerous lawsuits filed against her, she’s filed both personal and corporate bankruptcies, was homeless for a stretch, suffered the suicide of her son Alex in the Fall of 2010 and is now the center of a theft trial that begins on August 6th at the 9th Judicial District Courthouse in Glenwood Springs, Colorado.

Also during this period, Shawnee was arrested and jailed twice, once for fraud in her design business and once for a bad check.  She was required to undergo two mental competency hearings at the insistence of her first public defender.  Those hearings found the Shawnee Ryan was perfectly capable of standing trial, and shortly thereafter the public defender quit the case and left the Public Defender’s office.  The claims against her originally numbered 40 and are now down to seven.  She requested a special prosecutor and was denied.  A plea deal was offered to Shawnee and she refused it categorically.  In case you were wondering what this case is all about, Shawnee is accused of providing customers with lower-quality products than had been originally promised.

Through it all, the actions and lack thereof by the local newspapers has been curious at best.  Nobody has wanted to cover this case, and the reasons for that will become increasingly clear.  After the news of her first arrest hit the newspapers Shawnee’s business was defaced as some of the locals took it upon themselves to get dozens of copies and put them up all across her storefront window.  And to add a little more class to their project, the perpetrators included a lot of toilet paper in their efforts.  The police decided to not pursue this crime.  As an aside, guess who’s names are on the witness list?

As one might imagine, there are a lot of players involved in this story.  There are politicians, lawyers, police, local residents, contractors and tourism business people involved.  There is collusion involved.  There is witness tampering, intimidation, back-door deals, good old boy networking and massive and slanderous anonymous internet postings and impersonations being posted on over a dozen sites making claims that the defendant is a devil spawn and that she exists for the sole purpose of making people’s lives a living hell.  Defamation has run rampant.  It’s clear that somebody wants Shawnee Ryan out of town and to keep her mouth shut about something.

Through it all, Shawnee Ryan has maintained that she is 100% innocent of any of these charges, and claims that everything that has happened to her is due to a personal vendetta being carried out by a single powerful local businesswoman.  This woman got into problems and was in over her head building and outfitting her McDream home in the area.  She pulled the plug on everything with the new house, fired numerous contractors without paying them and Shawnee Ryan was the only contractor that said, “No, that’s not how it’s going to go down – we’ll just take this matter to court” and stood up to her.   Everything that has happened since then can be tied directly back to that one single event.

And now there have been 1000 names that have been pulled to seat the 12-person, one alternate jury from a town with only 8000 people total.  The two-week trial is set to wrap up on August 21st.  Jury selection alone is going to be a circus as the rooms available for jury selection hold around 50 people.

This case is one of three cases that the DA has lined up to be tried in the months leading up to his re-election effort.  This is case #2 of three.  Case #1 is in the hands of the jury as I write this.  That case involves the charge of a man shooting at a police officer two years ago in a curious situation, to put it mildly.  During final arguments the Sheriff instructed his deputies to clear out the front row behind the prosecutor’s table so they could sit there in plain sight of the jury, Blue Line style.  The defense attorney objected and the judge made them move to the back row in the court.  This is being mentioned solely to set the tone for what to expect in this story, as that kind of thing is the rule, not the exception.  The Sheriff does not think that this is jury tampering.  Nor does the DA.  In fact, the DA thinks that the Public Defender’s office has no right to exist in the first place and serves no useful purpose and has stated so openly and on the record.

Getting back to this case, two weeks ago the DA informed the judge that they have no intention of presenting any factual evidence with specifics about the alleged crimes of theft that Ms. Ryan is being charged with.  Instead, their case will consist 100% on what is known as 404(b) evidence which is also known as Character Evidence.  The DA has chosen to ignore the specifics of their original charges of theft and have chosen to take the fraud lane of the character assassination highway in order to reach their desired destination.  In a highly-unusual move, the defense made a motion to bring their own 404(b) evidence against the DA and has a witness list that boggles the mind.  Both these motions were approved, and ladies and gentlemen, it appears that we’re all headed for the courtroom.  And with 1000 names being pulled for a juror list, I do mean that we ALL will be headed for the courtroom.

What we have here is a perfect storm, and a very odd one at that.  The DA has spent an enormous amount of money on this case to date, and if he loses, he is at serious risk of losing the up-coming election because of his over-reaching and over-prosecution in these recent cases.  The people on the witness list also have a lot to lose.  Shawnee Ryan has nothing left to lose.

There are only a few days left before jury selection begins for the trial.  More specifics will be posted each day leading up to the trial so that the background stories can better be explained.  Once the trial begins, updates will be made on a Twitter account, @ShawneeRyanNews and more detailed updates will be available here.

Sit back in your seats, folks, it’s about to be showtime.