A Case of Grave Injustice
Lisl Auman met Matthaeus Jaehnig just that morning. By the end of the day, both he and a police officer were dead –and her life was over.
Lisl Auman was handcuffed and in police custody at the time of the crime, yet under the felony-murder rule , inherited from and long since abandoned by England, she was sentenced to life in prison without parole. Last summer, she lost her bid to the Colorado Court of Appeals to reverse the conviction. Thursday, January 15, the Colorado Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in her case. The issue before Colorado’s highest court will be whether Lisl’s arrest by police precluded her liability for felony murder.
Journalist Hunter Thompson took up Lisl’s cause during her first appeal, writing about it often in his ESPN column, including here.
I don’t do this very often — Never, in fact — but this case is such an outrage that it haunts me & gives me bad dreams at night. I am not a Criminal Lawyer, but I have what might be called “a very strong background” in the Criminal Justice System & many of my friends & associates are widely known as the best legal minds in that cruel & deadly business.
It is no place for amateurs, and even seasoned professionals can make mistakes that are often fatal. The System can grind up the Innocent as well as the Guilty, and that is what I believe happened to 20-year-old Lisl Auman, who was unjustly found guilty of murder and sent to prison for the rest of her Life Without Parole.
