The Persecution of Desirée González: A Case Study in Unequal Justice

The criminal case against Lakewood resident Desirée González raises grave questions about whether political and personal animosity have replaced equal justice under law in Jefferson County.

This is not a defense of any or every email that González sent. It is a clear-eyed examination of the extraordinary disparity between how she has been treated and how individuals who issued explicit, public, and recorded threats have been treated across Colorado.

Two Examples — One System

Jeromie Rose — left voicemails threatening to “put a bullet in the Governor’s head” and “kill” a prosecutor. These are recorded and explicit death threats. He was released on $3,000 bond. Later, he pled guilty and received probation. There was no prolonged pretrial detention.

Desirée González — emailed City Council a photograph of guns owned by other people, citing her concern those people might act violently. No direct threat of personal action was made. She had no ownership of guns herself. Jailed on $100,000 cash-only bond that was raised to $250,000 based on one false witness (see later evidence). She was held for a year in pretrial detention, serving more jail time than Rose, who threatened to execute officials.

There is no record that González ever threatened to shoot, harm, or attack anyone. Multiple Councilors testified under oath that they did not feel personally threatened. Yet González remains entangled in ongoing prosecution — including an active restraining order — based on the same image of guns she did not own and never threatened to use.

A Pattern That Cannot Be Ignored

Bond 80× higher than a proven death-threat case.

A year of pretrial detention — beyond normal for a nonviolent first-time offense.

Court arguments apparently hinged not on what González said, but rather how Council felt about what she said. Each Councilor was asked how they felt when they took the stand.

A total of four Council Members, including Olver, Able, Springsteen and Janssen, removed themselves from the case and testified they never felt threatened.

The jury deliberated for a full day on the case. As a group, they penned a letter that said, among other things, the circumstances were…

“greatly exacerbated and could likely have been avoided were it not for the flagrant failure of leadership shown by Adam Paul and the Lakewood City Council as a whole”. This was signed by the entire jury.

Of the seven charges left, only two charges resulted in convictions, a minority of the original charges. All were based on the same evidence as the others so there a sense of compromise rather than justice.

Lenore Herskovitz, who attended every day of trial, stated:

“Attending Desi’s hearings over the course of several years I have learned a great deal about our legal system. I discovered that truth and justice don’t really matter when you are up against people in power. While I felt that the emails were inappropriate and at times incoherent, they certainly did not warrant the punishment that was and continues to be inflicted on Ms. González.”

The public would not know any of this from mainstream reporting. The lack of coverage was anomalous.

Evidence of Retaliatory Targeting

During the October 15^th Ward 4 meeting, González’s vehicle was sabotaged at a ballot drop-box location. The perpetrator was caught on surveillance cameras.

The Lakewood Chief of Police personally responded to the scene and confirmed deliberate tampering.

The suspect was the same person whose testimony had previously helped raise her bond with false testimony, substantiating González’s claims of persecution.

In court filings (Case 2022CR003360), González alleges that there was retaliation against jail employees who refused to participate in misconduct against her. She asks the court to formally distinguish wrongdoers from deputies of integrity.

This is not the language of conspiracy. This is the language of someone asking for justice.

New allegations were made that she violated her probation, and she was once more thrown into jail for a day, where she contracted pneumonia. On October 21, 2025, those charges were withdrawn. Evidence disproved the case, which should have been established beforehand.

Why This Matters Beyond One Person

When a woman who never threatened anyone spends a year in jail pretrial, while another man who promised to kill the Governor walks free on probation — something is deeply broken.

If political speech is being selectively criminalized based on who is in power, that is not law enforcement. That is retaliation.

The core question is no longer whether Desirée González is controversial.

The question is whether Lakewood and Jefferson County are operating a dual justice system — one for the politically aligned, and one for the politically inconvenient.

This case is now in active appeal. And it deserves full public scrutiny.