{"id":42202,"date":"2022-02-14T15:53:53","date_gmt":"2022-02-14T22:53:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/charges-for-dane-in-colorado-wildfire-will-likely-be-dropped\/"},"modified":"2022-02-14T22:53:53","modified_gmt":"2022-02-14T22:53:53","slug":"charges-for-dane-in-colorado-wildfire-will-likely-be-dropped","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/charges-for-dane-in-colorado-wildfire-will-likely-be-dropped\/","title":{"rendered":"Charges for Dane in Colorado wildfire will likely be dropped"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A
A prosecutor says criminal charges will probably be dropped against the mentally ill Danish man, Jesper Joergensen, accused of starting the large 2018 Colorado wildfire. District Attorney Alonzo Payne didn\u2019t elaborate about his reasoning during a court hearing for Joergensen on Feb. 14, 2022. (Costilla County Sheriff's Office via AP file)<\/span>Uncredited<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

DENVER \u2013 Criminal charges will probably be dropped against a mentally ill Danish man accused of starting a large 2018 Colorado wildfire, who can no longer be forcibly medicated, a prosecutor said Monday.<\/p>\n

District Attorney Alonzo Payne made the comment without elaborating on the reasons during a court hearing to discuss the case against Jesper Joergensen, who has repeatedly been found mentally incompetent to stand trial.<\/p>\n

Payne suggested that he would like Joergensen, who was in the U.S. illegally when he was charged with starting the fire that destroyed over 140 homes in southern Colorado, to be deported.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do believe ICE custody is going to be the next step here,\u201d said Payne, who said prosecutors must still contact victims of the fire for required consultations.<\/p>\n

Payne did not return a telephone message seeking additional comment.<\/p>\n

\"A
A wildfire burns up a steep canyon July 8, 2018, near La Veta. A prosecutor says criminal charges will probably be dropped against a mentally ill Danish man accused of starting the large wildfire. District Attorney Alonzo Payne didn\u2019t elaborate about his reasoning during a court hearing for Jesper Joergensen on Monday. (Helen H. Richardson\/The Denver Post via AP file)<\/span>Helen H. Richardson<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Judge Gregory Lyman considered dropping the charges against Joergensen about a year ago \u2013 if he could be deported, as his lawyers had urged.<\/p>\n

But Lyman abandoned the idea <\/a>after another prosecutor told him that Joergensen would not be deported if released from jail because of Biden administration changes that would not make him a priority for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.<\/p>\n

Lyman instead ordered Joergensen to be sent to the Colorado Mental Health Institute in Pueblo, where patients can be forcibly medicated if a judge agrees certain legal criteria are met.<\/p>\n

In August, another judge allowed Joergensen to be forcibly medicated to treat his significant personality disorder and delusional disorder at the state mental health hospital but reversed the order in December after Joergensen\u2019s lawyers intervened.<\/p>\n

According to a court filing by Joergensen\u2019s lawyers seeking to dismiss the case, Joergensen showed \u201cslight improvements\u201d after taking the medication himself at the hospital, to avoid having it forcibly administered.<\/p>\n

However, his lawyers argued he would likely regress after being sent back to a county jail where he would stay while standing trial because the jail does not have staff members to forcibly medicate people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A prosecutor says criminal charges will probably be dropped against the mentally ill Danish man, Jesper Joergensen, accused of starting the large 2018 Colorado wildfire. District Attorney Alonzo Payne didn\u2019t elaborate about his reasoning during a court hearing for Joergensen on Feb. 14, 2022. (Costilla County Sheriff's Office via AP file)Uncredited DENVER \u2013 Criminal charges […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":42203,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[120,84],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-42202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-colorado","tag-wildfire"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42202\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42202"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=42202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}