PRAGMATIC ISSUES

Elon Musk didn’t just call out Colorado Governor Jared Polis Tuesday night he exposed the rot at the very core of performative policymaking.

Musk amplified a story of a “very dangerous” inmate released under state law, calling it “insane.”

He wasn’t wrong. What’s more insane is that the governor himself rushed onto X to huff indignantly, blaming county attorneys and district attorneys for failing to act, as if the courts were errand boys waiting for his marching orders.

Here’s the problem, when a governor signs a bill into law, it isn’t just theater. It becomes the framework that courts and prosecutors must follow.

Judges aren’t free to toss statutes aside because the governor suddenly realizes the law he signed has unintended consequences. District attorneys can’t invent new powers because the governor feels embarrassed on social media. That’s not how separation of powers works it is Civics 101.

Here is what the beef is about:

HB24-1034 was signed into law last year by Governor Jared Polis after it passed the legislature and states “While a defendant is incompetent to proceed, the defendant shall MUST not be tried or sentenced, nor shall the court consider or decide pretrial matters that are not susceptible of fair determination without the personal participation of the defendant.”

So a violent dangerous inmate had been released because of the law Our inept Governor Jared Polis signed which is bringing finally, national attention to the matter.

Weld County Sheriff Steve Reams “The state legislature and the Governor have continued to weaken the criminal justice system by handcuffing law enforcement, prosecutors and judges for the sake of criminals,” Colorado HB24-1034 has created a crisis where very dangerous individuals are being released to the street to reoffend over and over, this is the latest example.  I pray this individual doesn’t hurt another innocent victim but the public deserves to know of his past violent actions so they can protect themselves accordingly.”

And yet Polis’s knee-jerk response was to point fingers at local prosecutors, citing obscure sections of state code like a college freshman bluffing through a class presentation. This is what happens when politicians who have no education in how the judiciary truly functions start treating lawmaking like a vanity project. You can’t swagger onto a stage, sign a bill with a fat pen for the cameras, and then act shocked when the courts actually enforce it.

It gets better if you wanted to know about just two more cases like this one and this is just two of them, the state has hundreds from every city.

So yes, charges against Debisa Ephraim, 21, were dropped after he was found incompetent to proceed and not restorable, meaning he would not be fit to stand trial for the foreseeable future. Ephraim was facing multiple charges, including attempted murder, stemming from multiple fights back in April.

In an interesting note the same thing took place not too long ago in a case out of Jeffo, Guillermo Ramirez he was charged in a firey 2021 crash, even though police body cam in a separate incident showed Ephriam completely sane and coherent.

In another case, an Arapaho County inmate who tried to kidnap child released because he was found unfit to stand trial, The Arapahoe County inmate, Solomon Galligan, was found unfit to stand trial due to mental incompetence. He attempted to kidnap an 11-year-old boy during recess at Black Forest Hills Elementary School in April 2024. Galligan’s mental health issues have been a recurring factor in his legal troubles, and he has been placed in a mental health facility for treatment.

The charges against him have been dismissed, and he will not be released to the public for a time, how long well no one knows.

I actually wrote about this a month or so ago (https://crimeshop.org/2025/08/09/when-the-system-breaks-colorados-law-for-defendants-found-incompetent-and-not-restorable-and-how-it-fails-both-defendants-victims/)

These competency laws do way more harm than good and they damage the publics trust in our legal system as a whole. During the Ramirez and Ephraim trial which multiple local media outlets were covering myself and another person wrote into some of our local media outlets and expressed our concern over the bill that Polis had signed. I asked for one local media outlet to put me in touch with the DA. Those of us that wrote to the media were blatantly ignored.

Why, well we had stories about people that we knew personally who had in fact, faked their way through the court ordered evaluations so that they could be found incompetent and unfit and the cases just went away. Our stories did not align with what the local media was trying to sell. You can literally Google how to fake your way through a court ordered mental health evaluation. It is easy, the person that I knew just told them that he hears voice and that was it. Moreover our stories did not align with the media’s attempt to bring highlight those conducting the evaluations, those who insisted that they could not be faked. When in fact they can. Criminals actually talk to each other and it’s on Google.

Musk’s “insane” jab wasn’t just aimed at one inmate’s release. It was an indictment of a governor who treats governing like a TED Talk and Twitter spat rolled into one.

If Polis wanted to look competent, he could have admitted that his own policy has flaws and promised reform. Instead, he doubled down with bureaucratic jargon that only underscored how little he understands about the machinery of justice he supposedly commands.

Colorado deserves better than a governor who plays lawyer on Twitter. Governor Jared Polis’s ignorance of how laws work, how courts and DA’s are forced to work because of something he signed is inexcusable.

Because when executives legislate without comprehension, the result isn’t just embarrassing, it’s dangerous.