On Friday, Gov. Jared Polis issued 35 pardons and nine commutations. Among those was Brandin Kreuzer, who was convicted in 2010 for irreparably injuring a Douglas County deputy at the end of a crime spree involving burglaries, armed robberies, and car thefts. 

Polis granted Kreuzer parole 35 years early on National Peace Officer Memorial Day — showing, as Sheriff Darren Weekly wrote, “a complete lack of respect for the brave men and women who wear the badge and put their lives on the line every day.” 

In his clemency letter, Polis got the facts wrong. He claimed Kreuzer’s codefendant, Taylor Moudy, received only seven years in the Youthful Offender System while Kreuzer got 50 years in adult prison. 

Except Moudy got 45 years — and wasn’t the one who pulled the trigger. 

The governor’s office quietly replaced the letter only after District Attorney George Brauchler asked Polis why he based “his decision, in part, on a lie, on this bad information?” 

In granting clemency, Polis made one thing abundantly clear: “You have taken accountability for your actions and recognize the mistakes you made in the past. You are remorseful and ready to advance to a new phase of life.” 

That language appears in seven other commutations Polis issued last week, including one for a second-degree murderer. Each reads like copy-paste, signed with an autopen — except for the ninth commutation letter. 

For ex-Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, serving nearly nine years behind bars for orchestrating a breach of her election offices, it was a far lower standard than applied to a would-be cop killer. 

“Importantly, your application demonstrates taking responsibility for your crimes, and a commitment to follow the law going forward,” Polis wrote her, granting Peters parole on June 1. (She was already eligible for parole by 2028.)

Is Tina Peters the one “taking responsibility,” or is it just the paperwork she filed? 

“Four years ago, I misled the secretary of state when allowing a person to gain access to county voting equipment. That was wrong,” Peters wrote in her application. She pledged her actions will “always follow the law” and avoid the “mistakes of the past.” 

And that’s all she wrote. 

Peters simply copped to “misleading the secretary of state,” sanitizing her conduct. She didn’t just “allow” access. She orchestrated an elaborate criminal impersonation scheme. Peters deceived her own staff, brought in a computer hacker posing under a contractor’s identity and ordered surveillance cameras turned off — all to facilitate the copying of election hard drives. 

That resulted in convictions for felony conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, three felony counts of attempt to influence a public servant and three misdemeanors. 

Where was her apology for the criminal impersonation scheme? For lying to her own employees? To her community? To Gerald Wood, who was impersonated by someone else at Peters’ direction? To Mesa County taxpayers, whom she cost over $1 million? 

Acknowledging one small element of the crime while omitting everything else reflects a carefully lawyered attempt to clear Polis’ “responsibility” bar for clemency. 

Polis bought it anyway. 

His reasons relied on one aspect of a decision by the Colorado Court of Appeals vacating Peters’ original sentence — specifically, that Barrett’s sentencing remarks improperly considered her election beliefs. 

Polis agreed with the court that “the First Amendment generally prohibits punishing someone for their protected speech” and Barrett’s comments about Peters’ belief in election fraud “went beyond relevant considerations for her sentencing.” 

Fair enough. But Polis stretched that narrow finding into something the court never suggested: that the sentence itself was “extremely unusual and lengthy.”  

The appeals court returned the case to Barrett with broad discretion for resentencing precisely because the length of the sentence wasn’t the problem.  

It upheld the trial, the evidence and every conviction. It did not call the sentence excessive, assign a new judge or require a new hearing. Barrett could have imposed an identical sentence with constitutionally sound reasoning. 

Polis borrowed a single piece of the court’s logic to justify the outcome he already wanted. Then he used that reasoning to usurp the judiciary and preempt an active process. 

That point was stressed by Mesa County District Attorney Dan Rubinstein, who blasted Polis’ “irresponsible act” in drastically reducing her sentence “for a misguided and misunderstood reason.” 

“The Court of Appeals did not find the sentence overly harsh but merely ordered Judge Barrett to resentence her with a cleaner record,” Rubinstein wrote. “Our system is designed for appellate courts to correct legal errors if they exist. That process was still underway, yet the Governor chose to substitute his judgment for the courts, the sentencing judge, and the Mesa County community…” 

That’s key: Peters had until this Friday to file a petition with the Colorado Supreme Court. Prosecutors would respond, and the process would continue as far as the Supreme Court decided. Only then would the case return to Barrett for resentencing. 

This raises a troubling question. What, exactly, did Polis commute? The sentence he officially commuted was already vacated. Resentencing hadn’t happened. The appeals process was — and remains — active. Barrett could impose a different sentence. Peters is even continuing her Supreme Court appeal after accepting clemency. 

Let’s be real: Jared Polis couldn’t honestly write that Peters was remorseful because she isn’t. So, he copy-pastes that language for murderers and cop shooters but gives Peters a pass. 

For Tina Peters, Polis abandoned his own standard and disrupted an active judicial process — under the pretense of the First Amendment — to reach a predetermined outcome. 

Jimmy Sengenberger is an investigative journalist, public speaker, and longtime local talk-radio host. Reach Jimmy online at Jimmysengenberger.com or on X (formerly Twitter) @SengCenter.