Mari Newman

The Blind Man Who Called 911

Philip White asked a Denver officer to witness a dispute at the Greyhound terminal. At trial, the jury awarded damages for White’s physical injuries and separately considered punishment. The later appeal turned on how the verdict form divided those awards.

White was seventy-seven and blind. In May 2012, terminal staff told him to leave after his bus filled. He called 911 to ask whether he was breaking the law and requested an officer who could observe what he could not.

White asked to touch the responding officer’s badge so he could verify the identity of the person speaking to him. Surveillance footage and testimony later showed the officer driving White’s head into a ticket counter. The impact opened a gash, and the handcuffs injured nerves White relied upon to hold his cane. Criminal charges from the encounter were dismissed.

Newman tried the civil-rights case with co-counsel. A federal jury awarded White $100,000 in compensatory damages and $300,000 in punitive damages. Compensatory damages addressed White’s injury and loss. Punitive damages expressed the jury’s judgment about the officer’s conduct.

The Undivided Verdict

The case continued over prejudgment interest. White sought interest on the compensatory award for the period before judgment, arguing that full compensation required recognition of the time he had been deprived of the money.

The jury had returned one compensatory number rather than separating economic loss from noneconomic harm. In 2017, the Tenth Circuit held that prejudgment interest is not automatic in a Section 1983 case and affirmed the trial judge’s refusal to estimate how much of the $100,000 represented economic damages.

The appellate decision left the $400,000 verdict intact.

Marvin Booker Returned for His Shoes

Denver police arrested Marvin Booker in July 2010 on a warrant connected to a missed hearing. Booker was fifty-six, weighed approximately 135 pounds, and preached on the street. During booking at the downtown detention center, he turned back toward the chair where he had left his shoes.

Deputies characterized the movement as resistance. The estate’s evidence presented a different sequence. Officers forced Booker face-down, placed substantial weight on his back, used a carotid hold for roughly two and a half minutes, applied an eight-second Taser cycle, and kept control after he was handcuffed and his limbs were restrained.

The Tenth Circuit addressed the case before trial because the deputies appealed the denial of qualified immunity. At that stage, the court accepted the estate’s supported version of disputed facts. It held that a jury could find excessive force, deliberate indifference to an urgent medical need, failure to intervene, and supervisory liability.

Three Weeks before a Jury

The immunity ruling opened the courthouse rather than deciding the facts. Newman and the estate’s team still had to present the booking video, restraint duration, medical evidence, officer roles, intervention opportunities, and supervision evidence at trial.

After three weeks of testimony, the jury returned a $4.65 million verdict. Denver later paid $6 million in a final resolution that included the verdict, fees, and costs; the payment was not an additional recovery.

The evidence allowed jurors to assess each official’s role in the restraint. One official initiated restraint, others added pressure or devices, and others had time to intervene or obtain medical help. Civil-rights law required the jury to decide what each person did within the two-minute-fifty-five-second sequence.

Michael Marshall Needed Clinical Care

Michael Marshall entered Denver’s jail in November 2015 after an arrest for trespassing. He was homeless, had schizophrenia, and was experiencing a psychotic episode. During an encounter with deputies, he was held prone, vomited, lost consciousness, and was placed in a restraint chair. He died nine days later after life support was withdrawn.

Newman and the family’s legal team negotiated before filing suit. Denver agreed to a $4.65 million payment and reforms involving mental-health staffing, round-the-clock access to clinicians, psychiatric-crisis and de-escalation training, and revisions to force and medical-response practices. Newman’s firm reports a $4.85 million combined recovery when a separate payment is included.

Marshall could not leave the jail, choose a provider, or call an outside physician. Because the jail controlled his movement, it also bore responsibility for recognizing and responding to his psychiatric and medical distress.

Emily Rice’s Treatable Internal Injuries

Emily Rice was twenty-four when she crashed her car in February 2006 and was taken to Denver Health. The hospital identified a shoulder contusion and released her to the jail. The injuries it missed—a lacerated spleen and liver—were life-threatening but treatable.

During approximately twenty hours in custody, Rice repeatedly complained of pain and showed signs of internal bleeding. She was not returned for adequate medical treatment and died in her cell.

Newman and co-counsel obtained settlements totaling $7 million: $4 million from Denver Health and $3 million from the City. The agreements required additional training, a protocol for hospital patients being transferred to jail, and vital-sign checks every four hours during the first twenty-four hours after discharge when monitoring was indicated.

The reforms became known in Denver as “Emily’s Protocols.” They linked the hospital and jail instead of treating discharge as the end of the hospital’s responsibility and booking as the beginning of the jail’s. Information had to follow the patient across the transfer.

Amanda Hall and the Missing Cameras

Amanda Hall worked in a prison kitchen under the supervision of Colorado corrections sergeant Leshawn Terrell. The federal court found that Terrell coerced Hall into a sexual relationship over several months and brutally assaulted her after she refused further contact, causing lasting physical and emotional injury.

The court awarded $354,070.41 in compensatory damages and $1 million in punitive damages against Terrell. A separate $250,000 settlement resolved claims involving the Colorado Department of Corrections and other defendants. Newman’s firm describes the combined result, including additional components, as nearly $1.75 million.

Under the settlement, officials had to install cameras in areas that lacked sufficient surveillance. The recordings created independent evidence when a staff member controlled a work assignment, movement, access, and the credibility dispute between an incarcerated person and an officer.

Diana Sanchez Labored for Five Hours

Diana Sanchez told Denver jail deputies and medical staff that she was in labor. For approximately five hours, she remained in a medical cell while her contractions intensified. She gave birth to her son on a cold concrete bench without a clinician assisting the delivery.

Newman and Andy McNulty represented Sanchez and her child. Denver Health agreed to pay $320,000, and the City agreed to pay $160,000. Denver Health also required annual training for jail medical personnel concerning pregnancy and labor, while the Sheriff Department changed policy so that a person in labor would be taken immediately to a hospital.

The $480,000 settlement resolved one family’s claims. The policy terms addressed the decision that had made the birth possible: whether staff treated labor as an emergency or waited for routine transportation and the morning booking schedule.

Colorado Senate Bill 20-217

After Sanchez’s case, Newman worked with community advocates and legislators on broader protections for pregnant and postpartum people. Newman joined affected families, advocates, medical professionals, and lawmakers in supporting the legislation, drawing on the custody cases she had litigated.

Colorado’s 2021 perinatal-protection law imposed requirements on facilities holding people capable of pregnancy and required reporting concerning restraints. In 2023, the legislature added a rebuttable presumption against detention or incarceration for pregnant and postpartum defendants, requiring a court to make specific findings before choosing confinement over available alternatives.

The reform moved the inquiry earlier. Instead of focusing only on how a jail should respond after labor begins, officials must consider whether a pregnant or postpartum person needs to be confined there in the first place.

Richard Ward in His Mother’s Car

Pueblo County deputies encountered Richard Ward in February 2022 in the back seat of a parked car outside a middle school, beside his mother. Ward said he might have a pocketknife. During questioning, he put an anti-anxiety pill in his mouth. A deputy began pulling him from the car, a struggle followed, and the deputy shot him three times in less than thirty seconds.

Ward’s estate and his mother, Kristy Ward Stamp, filed federal claims. The district court held that a jury could find Ward posed no immediate credible threat when force was used. It also preserved claims concerning Ward Stamp’s detention and the seizure of her phone and vehicle.

On appeal, Newman and Andy McNulty joined the family’s briefing. In June 2026, the Tenth Circuit rejected the officers’ challenge to the qualified-immunity framework and dismissed arguments that depended on replacing the district court’s factual assumptions with the officers’ version. The Tenth Circuit allowed the claims to continue but did not decide liability.

Colorado’s State Civil-Rights Action

Newman’s courtroom work also informed legislative advocacy after years of federal cases in which qualified immunity determined whether a jury could hear disputed facts. She worked with Representative Leslie Herod and a larger coalition on the bill that became Colorado Senate Bill 20-217 and testified during the legislative process.

The enacted law created a civil action for violations of rights secured by the Colorado Constitution. A prevailing plaintiff may recover reasonable attorney fees, and qualified immunity is unavailable as a defense. Political subdivisions generally indemnify officers, subject to a limited personal-liability provision when the employer finds an absence of good-faith reasonable belief.

The statute also limited physical and deadly force, prohibited chokeholds, required officers to intervene in unlawful force and report it, expanded body-camera obligations, and created consequences for nonactivation or tampering.

Verdicts, Policy, and Colorado Law

Newman has practiced civil-rights and employment law for more than twenty-five years and now works at Newman | McNulty with Andy McNulty and Madeline Leibin. Her public work extends from trial and appellate litigation to legislative testimony, writing, teaching, and civil-rights organizations.

Her reported matters include force against a blind caller, group restraint, medical neglect in custody, abuse concealed by missing surveillance, perinatal care, and excessive-force litigation involving Richard Ward.

The evidence has included video, clinical signs, jail-classification records, pregnancy policies, and statutory duties already available to the hospital and jail.