Colorado’s second-highest court ruled this month that a Weld County judge was wrong to deny bail to a murder defendant in the window between the state Supreme Court’s recognition of the right to bail and the voters’ subsequent overruling of that decision through a 2024 constitutional amendment.
Moises Rodriguez-Nunez stands accused of first-degree murder for the 2021 killing of Jacob Fooshee. A grand jury indicted him last June.
Whether Rodrigez-Nunez was eligible for pretrial release on bail was a product of three related developments:
- In 2020, the legislature abolished Colorado’s death penalty
- In 2023, the Supreme Court concluded that Colorado’s constitutional provision denying bail to those accused of “capital offenses” no longer applied due to the elimination of capital punishment
- In 2024, voters changed the state constitution through Amendment I to restore bail ineligibility for those charged with first-degree murder
The legislature, which referred Amendment I to the ballot, did not make the change retroactive. Therefore, defendants who allegedly committed murder between the abolition of the death penalty and voters’ passage of Amendment I were eligible for bail.
Following his indictment, Rodriguez-Nunez appeared before then-District Court Judge Marcelo Kopcow in July 2025. His defense attorney was not prepared to request a specific bond amount, so the attorney asked Kopcow to “set some bond” and entertain arguments later about a lower amount…