Massive volume of digital evidence is crippling Colorado's criminal justice system

CBS Colorado continues to report the major concerns and response to the massive volume of digital evidence officials say is crippling the state's criminal justice system.  

The Colorado First Judicial District Attorney's Office prosecutes nearly 20,000 criminal cases a year, and most of them include video as evidence.

The Colorado District Attorneys' Council says a serious crime can easily result in more than 50 hours of body camera footage in addition to dashcam, doorbell camera and drone video. Prosecutors and public defenders are drowning in digital data.

"We're going to look at hours and hours of tape for a single case that doesn't necessarily rise to the point of a major crime," said District Attorney Alexis King of the First Judicial District.

King says her office received more than 67,000 videos in 2025 with nearly 42,000 hours of footage -- an 83% increase in just three years. 

"It's just a massive wave of information," King said. 

King saw the wave coming when the state legislature passed a law 5 years ago requiring all 14,000 law enforcement officers in Colorado to wear bodycams.

King hired a chief technology officer and reassigned 25 staff members to process digital evidence -- from surveillance video to cell phone extractions -- to ensure nothing is missed.

"If we've seized six phones, and we've only had a download for two, we're going to say what's the status of those other two," King explained. 

If the staggering volume of data isn't enough, many law enforcement agencies use third party vendors to electronically submit their data. Each vendor has its own format, which has forced district attorneys and public defenders to buy multiple software licenses just to view the evidence.

King says she's spending $200,000 a year. "And that price is only going to go up," she said. 

But the price of not keeping up is far greater. By law, prosecutors have 21 days after a defendant's first appearance to share evidence with the defense or they face sanctions.

One district attorney's office in Colorado received so many sanctions for not turning over evidence on time that the judge lowered the defendant's charge from first degree to second-degree murder.

Attorneys are not only struggling to review, catalogue and redact the mounting data but to pay for storage, which they say has increased 45% in the past 10 years.

State lawmakers created a task force to come up with solutions. It issued a report this month recommending, among other things, that the state upgrade its current system, which is used primarily to share non-digital evidence, and integrate it with some of the top vendor systems. The co-chairs of the task force, James Karbach and Tom Raynes, admit it will cost significant money, but they say it's about ensuring justice in the criminal justice system. 

Karbach is the director of Legislative Policy and External Communications at the Colorado State Public Defender, and Raynes is the executive director of the Colorado District Attorneys' Council, respectively.  

King agrees, "We really have to think about what future looks like and how to plan for that not only here but state level."a