Colorado Criminal Pretrial Defense Manual

Gail K. Johnson has nearly three decades of experience representing clients in criminal and civil cases in federal and state courts in Colorado, California, and the District of Columbia. She has handled cases involving many types of criminal charges, including capital murder, felony murder, sexual assault, robbery, drug and firearm offenses, mail and wire fraud, and insider trading.

Ms. Johnson has successfully represented criminal defendants at all stages of a criminal case, including pre-filing, trial, appeal, state post-conviction proceedings, federal habeas, clemency advocacy, and advocacy with Conviction Review or Conviction Integrity Units. She is a member of the Criminal Justice Act panels for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit and the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado.

Ms. Johnson’s civil-rights practice focuses on advocacy and litigation to vindicate the rights of individuals in prison, obtain compensation and exoneration for those wrongly convicted of crimes, challenge the use of excessive force by law enforcement officials in the community, and compel the release of public records under federal and state “sunshine” laws. She also sometimes represents victims in the criminal legal system.

Ms. Johnson has presented trainings on criminal law to Colorado state judges at their annual conference and for other criminal-defense attorneys and investigators around the country regarding such diverse topics as federal death-penalty discovery and motions practice, jury instructions, appellate issue selection, brief writing, and postconviction litigation. She also enjoys guest teaching classes for law students and occasionally speaking to community groups.

After receiving her J.D. from Yale Law School in 1996, Ms. Johnson began her legal career as an E. Barrett Prettyman Fellow with the Georgetown Criminal Justice Clinic in Washington, D.C. The following year, she served as a law clerk to then-Justice Michael L. Bender on the Colorado Supreme Court. She then practiced law for several years at O’Melveny & Myers LLP (San Francisco office) and at Haddon, Morgan & Foreman, P.C. (Denver), before co-founding, in 2008, the boutique firm that later became Johnson & Klein Law.

Eric K. Klein has more than 25 years of trial and appellate experience and has established himself as a top criminal-defense attorney handling federal and state criminal cases in Colorado, Wyoming, the District of Columbia, and various federal courts across the country. He has successfully defended clients charged with crimes ranging from drug possession to sexual assault and murder. He has won at the trial, appellate, and post-conviction stages.

Mr. Klein is a member of the Criminal Justice Act (CJA) panel for the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado. He has also served as CJA counsel in federal capital cases in the U.S. District Courts for the District of Columbia and the Western District of Missouri.

Federal and state courts in Colorado and Wyoming have recognized Mr. Klein more than a dozen times as an expert witness in the standards for constitutionally effective assistance of counsel.

Mr. Klein has trained attorneys and investigators around the country. For many years, he has served as adjunct faculty for Harvard Law School’s annual Trial Advocacy Workshop. He has also been a visiting professor in the Juvenile Justice Clinic at Georgetown University Law Center.

Mr. Klein graduated magna cum laude from Georgetown Law in 1998 and was inducted into the Order of the Coif. He then clerked for the Honorable Jose A. Gonzalez, Jr., in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida before returning to Georgetown as an E. Barrett Prettyman Fellow in the Criminal Justice Clinic. Following this graduate law fellowship, Mr. Klein spent eight years at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia, where he ultimately served as a Supervising Attorney. Mr. Klein has practiced law in Colorado since 2010 and has been a partner at Johnson & Klein Law since 2013.