{"id":2443173,"date":"2019-04-18T21:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-04-19T03:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=304428"},"modified":"2019-04-18T21:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-04-19T03:00:00","slug":"judge-denies-mans-request-to-withdraw-plea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/judge-denies-mans-request-to-withdraw-plea\/","title":{"rendered":"Judge denies man\u2019s request to withdraw plea"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

An Aspen man who pleaded guilty to burglary and indecent exposure charges last year will have to suffer the consequences of that action after a District Court judge refused Thursday to let him withdraw his plea.<\/p>\n

District Judge Chris Seldin said that though Benjamin Morton, 30, didn\u2019t have a lawyer at the time of his plea, he was still properly advised of the consequences of his guilty plea, including the fact that he\u2019d have to register as a sex offender.<\/p>\n

Allowing Morton to withdraw the plea would \u201cmake a mockery\u201d of the court\u2019s regular, detailed efforts to ensure defendants pleading guilty understand what they\u2019re doing, Seldin said. The judge routinely goes through a lengthy series of questions to make sure defendants who plead guilty know the consequences of their actions and understand the rights they give up in such situations.<\/p>\n

Seldin, who handled Morton\u2019s case from beginning to end, said he was always under the impression that Morton was able to make rational, adult choices about his case.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was no reason to doubt that his answers to my questions were accurate and truthful,\u201d Seldin said.<\/p>\n

However, Morton\u2019s lawyer, Michael Fox, said his client had a \u201cfundamental misunderstanding\u201d of what he\u2019d done and what punishments he was in line to receive. Morton, who has a learning disability, didn\u2019t even know what charges he\u2019d pleaded guilty to, which was a just reason to allow the plea withdrawal, Fox said.<\/p>\n

The judge disagreed.<\/p>\n

Pitkin County sheriff\u2019s deputies arrested Morton in May<\/a> after a woman reported seeing him enter her apartment and masturbate in her roommate\u2019s room. He later admitted the behavior to a deputy.<\/p>\n

In October, he pleaded guilty to felony burglary and misdemeanor indecent exposure. The burglary plea was in exchange for a two-year deferred sentence, meaning the felony conviction would not appear on his record after two years provided he wasn\u2019t charged with another crime.<\/p>\n

The indecent exposure plea, however, came with no strings. That meant Morton would have to register as a sex offender for a minimum of 10 years, prosecutor Don Nottingham said.<\/p>\n

Nottingham said he wrote in the plea paperwork he gave to Morton in October that he would have to register as a sex offender, and repeated that information in an email he sent him.<\/p>\n

The May offense was not the first time Morton had been in trouble for his behavior.<\/p>\n

In April 2018, Morton pleaded guilty to misdemeanor public indecency after Snowmass Village police arrested him for allegedly masturbating in a condominium complex hot tub. He received a year of unsupervised probation in that case. He was originally charged with indecent exposure when he was arrested.<\/p>\n

Morton is scheduled to be sentenced under terms of his October plea deal next month.<\/p>\n

jauslander@aspentimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An Aspen man who pleaded guilty to burglary and indecent exposure charges last year will have to suffer the consequences of that action after a District Court judge refused Thursday to let him withdraw his plea. District Judge Chris Seldin said that though Benjamin Morton, 30, didn\u2019t have a lawyer at the time of his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2443173","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-16 22:38:17","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2443173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2443173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2443173\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2443173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2443173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2443173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}