The tale of Sarah Schielke’s criminal profession starts with an unconventional selection: a 2010 Craigslist commercial. Contemporary from Boston College College of Legislation and in quest of a brand new get started in Colorado, she offered legal services at minimum price, brazenly acknowledging her newcomer standing. This strange method started a profession that might grow to be civil rights litigation.
This daring get started equipped surprising alternatives, permitting her to achieve in depth hands-on enjoy swiftly. In 2012, she based the Lifestyles and Liberty Legislation Workplace, dedicating her apply to prison protection and civil rights litigation. Her determination to by no means paintings underneath every other legal professional enabled her to expand distinctive approaches that might later revolutionize civil rights advocacy.
Schielke pioneered a particular process of freeing police frame digital camera photos to the general public, bringing unparalleled transparency to legislation enforcement responsibility. This method proved pivotal in representing Karen Garner, a girl with dementia who suffered accidents all through a 2020 Loveland police arrest. The photos’s free up in April 2021 attracted nationwide consideration and sparked complete departmental evaluations.
The effects had been vital: Officer Austin Hopp won 5 years in jail, whilst Officer Daria Jalali served 45 days with 3 years of probation. The case settled for $3 million, dramatically exceeding the everyday $100,000 agreement for equivalent instances. Schielke constructed in this luck in 2022, securing a record-breaking $7 million agreement for a consumer tased via Idaho Springs cops in his house.
Non-public tragedy formed her technique to legislation profoundly. The lack of her father to most cancers at 59, in a while after he witnessed her first trial loss, led her to include gratitude and forgiveness. This enjoy essentially reworked her point of view on each existence and criminal apply.
Her definition of braveness displays her method: the decision to deal with wrongs and pursue improvement, in particular when going through robust opposition. This braveness used to be glaring in a Transparent Creek County case the place she confronted contempt fees for freeing frame digital camera photos in spite of following judicial orders. Somewhat than backing down, she embraced the problem, even dressed in a t-shirt to courtroom highlighting the First Modification violation.
As a feminine legal professional, Schielke recognizes the extra adaptability required in comparison to male opposite numbers. She emphasizes keeping up authenticity whilst navigating skilled calls for and actively works to grow to be the machine from inside of, mentoring sturdy girls on her personnel.
Her tenet unearths a compassionate working out of human nature: She believes there are most effective just right other folks and just right other folks in ache. Each and every individual, she maintains, approaches their day meaning to do their perfect, and inappropriate actions often stem from private struggles.
Supporting her luck is a dedication to steady studying and the a very powerful backing of her husband, who remains house with their daughters, enabling her difficult profession. This basis permits her to handle her cutting edge method whilst balancing skilled tasks.
Popularity for her transformative paintings got here via her variety as USA TODAY’s Ladies of the Yr honoree for Colorado. Her adventure from a Craigslist newbie to a pioneering drive in civil rights legislation demonstrates how decision and cutting edge pondering can reshape the justice machine.
Thru her distinctive mixture of criminal experience and human working out, Schielke has created a practice that wins unparalleled settlements and drives systemic alternate in legislation enforcement practices. Her technique to civil rights litigation, combining transparency with public responsibility, continues to redefine the bounds of what’s imaginable within the pursuit of justice.
