Fremont County DUI Court Process

The Fremont Combined Court shuts down completely, every single day, from noon to 12:30 p.m. for lunch — no filings, no fine payments, no inquiries of any kind get processed during that window. Arriving at 11:55 to file something ahead of a deadline just means a guaranteed wait; scheduling anything mid-morning or mid-afternoon instead avoids the problem entirely. Misdemeanor DUI and first-offense traffic cases go before Judge Alexandra Robak in County Court Division A, with Judge Stephen Talbot handling bond settings, advisements, and preliminary matters as magistrate in Division C. Felony cases, including repeat-offender escalations and vehicular assault charges, split between Judges Kaitlin Turner and Lauren Swan in District Court.

The courthouse's device policy goes further than a simple silence rule. Recording anything — audio, video, even a screenshot — is flatly prohibited without the presiding judge's explicit prior written permission, and using a phone inside the courtroom at all, even silently to check a calendar, risks immediate contempt proceedings, device confiscation, or ejection by the bailiffs. Devices need to be powered down entirely before clearing the security checkpoint, not just muted once inside. For anyone attending remotely, the court runs two separate Webex links with a hard boundary between them: one secured channel for actual parties and their attorneys, and a completely separate "Public Livestreaming" link for family and observers. A relative who tries logging into the party link to support a defendant gets rejected, muted, or ejected by the clerk — a visible, disruptive mistake that's worth preventing by making sure everyone attending knows which link is actually theirs to use.

Anyone heading toward sentencing should take the Pre-Sentence Investigation seriously. Probation conducts a thorough review covering substance abuse history, re-offense risk, education, and social background, with the finished report landing in front of the judge and DA at least three days before sentencing. How a defendant handles that interview — honest and cooperative versus defensive and combative — has a real, documented effect on the severity of the final sentence; treating it like an adversarial interrogation rather than a genuine assessment routinely produces worse outcomes.

For repeat impaired-driving offenders, the district runs a designated SOBER Court (DWI Court) coordinated by Jodi Agnes, built on intensive probation supervision, frequent randomized urinalysis and breath testing, and mandatory cognitive-behavioral therapy — often the only realistic alternative to a mandatory minimum jail sentence for anyone with multiple prior convictions. A separate Adult Drug Court serves the broader substance-use population, and limited diversion options exist case by case through the DA's office and the Probation Department, housed inside the courthouse at Suite 104.

Required Level I or Level II alcohol education and therapy runs through several local, OBH-licensed providers in Cañon City, along with a regional outpatient option out of Pueblo offering transparent per-session pricing — worth asking about up front, since Track D's 43-week program adds up fast even at modest per-session rates. The county's own public health department separately runs a state-grant-funded substance use education and prevention program independent of the court-mandated classes, a resource worth knowing about regardless of where a case ends up.

One consumer-protection note worth flagging directly: some firms advertising aggressively online for "Fremont County, Colorado" DUI defense are actually based entirely out of state, with their marketing copy referencing cities that share the Fremont County name in a different state altogether. Verifying that any retained attorney actually practices in southern Colorado, rather than trusting a search result, is worth the extra five minutes.

Sources

• Colorado Judicial Branch — Fremont County
• Colorado Judicial Branch — Fremont County Judges and Staff
• Criminal Justice Programs Unit — Problem-Solving Court Program Locations