A Denver jury convicted former Colorado state Sen. Sonya Jaquez Lewis of multiple charges related to the time she spent serving the public. Jaquez Lewis was convicted of four felony charges including attempting to influence a public figure and three counts of forgery, according to information shared by the Denver District Attorney’s Office.
“The public expects that governments operate honestly and transparently and that elected officials be held to a high standard,” Denver District Attorney John Walsh went on to say in a statement. “Sonya Jaquez Lewis has now been convicted by a Denver jury of fabricating documents during a legislative investigation – behavior that we as a community simply cannot tolerate.”
Details concerning the charges against her weren’t readily available immediately following the conviction, as CBS Colorado made a request for additional records from the District Attorney’s Office. There was also no public statement released concerning the charges when they were first filed, though the story was covered by local media outlets in July 2025.
However, a report from the Colorado Sun revealed that the former senator was accused of fabricating letters of support that were sent to the Colorado Senate Ethics Committee in an attempt to avoid sanctions amid an investigation she was under concerning her treatment of Capitol aides. The jury only deliberated for four hours.
According to CBS Colorado, Jaquez Lewis was released on a personal recognizance bond. Lewis was arraigned during the summer of the same year. The trial was quick and to the point, lasting only three days, court records revealed. Complaints were made against the former senator alleging she mistreated legislative aides in 2024, though she called the allegations false.
Jaquez Lewis said that the accusations were designed to make her “the artificial focus of this larger conflict. I am being dragged through the mud for political ends.” The Political Workers Guild of Colorado, a labor union that represents legislative aides, campaign workers, and political organizers demanded that Jaquez Lewis resign from her post in December 2024. The offenses she’s accused of were alleged to have took place between January 31 and February 11, 2025.
The most serious charge of the four against Jaquez Lewis was attempting to influence a public servant, which is considered a Class 4 felony. The disgraced former senator is now looking at a potential sentence of six years in prison and a $500,000 fine. Forgery is also considered a felony, but is considered a lower-level offense with a maximum penalty of three years in prison per count.
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Jaquez Lewis’s sentencing has been set for February 27. In a lucky break for the defendant, prosecutors are planning to request she be given probation. Jaquez Lewis stepped down from her position in February 2025 after the Senate Ethics Committee launched an investigation into the allegations concerning her mistreatment of her Capitol aides.
Her resignation followed an announcement from the committee confirming she had fabricated at least one letter of support that was reportedly penned by a former aide. The investigation uncovered that the aide whose name was attached to the letter revealed that she hadn’t written it and had not been in touch with the then-senator for almost a year.
When she was confronted about the forgery, Jaquez Lewis told investigators that she was simply relaying information she gathered from conversations she had with the aide in the past. However, the letter was written in the first person and had the aide’s name in the letterhead. It was then discovered that Jaquez Lewis had forged several other letters purported to be from other former aides.
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