Eagle County inmate will appeal his felony conviction and challenge process that left him in prison awaiting sentencing for an 'unreasonably long' period

After being convicted of felonious assault of a peace officer, Eagle County inmate Mark Goodban waited 11 months at the Eagle County Detention Center before receiving his sentence, which the judge ruled described as “unreasonably long”.

Goodban is now seeking to have that case overturned and also intends to ask another court to review the procedures by which he was incarcerated in a civil suit.

Goodban's June 2023 felony conviction also came with two misdemeanor convictions, including violating a civil protection order and disorderly conduct. These are among more than a dozen charges of other crimes related to a protection order against Goodban issued by a neighbor at his Avon apartment, which resulted in Goodban being arrested on multiple occasions. In one indictment, dating from June 2022, Goodban was charged with four separate counts of violating a protection order in a single arrest.

Earlier in 2022, the Avon Police Department confiscated Goodban's guns and ammunition as part of a Red Flag case in which Goodban was accused of making threatening statements. Goodban claims he made no threatening statements and that the search warrant was executed illegally and only served to confiscate items he is legally allowed to possess, including a rare “OA-” pistol. 98” from Olympic Arms.

The OA-98, which uses standard 30-round AR-15 magazines, was designed specifically to comply with the 1994 assault weapons ban and, with its low weight and elimination of parts including the barrel shroud and threaded muzzle, does not meet the requirements. the definition of an assault pistol.

Goodban said the misunderstanding regarding the legality of that gun, along with charges against him under the Red Flag Law, triggered the confiscation of all of his other guns, including three other guns, all of his ammunition and a belt buckle. containing brass knuckles.

Goodban said he believed the original warrant was issued as an arrest warrant and not a search warrant, and that he believed his property should be returned to him and he should be entitled to damages- interests. He claims that while carrying out the search, the officers also damaged his apartment.

He claims that this case, as well as many of his other misdemeanor cases, remain open and that many of these cases violated his right to a speedy trial while he was incarcerated awaiting sentencing on his felony conviction.

The long delay was the result of a competency assessment, conducted on Goodban in August 2023, which determined that he was not competent to understand the upcoming legal proceedings.

In April 2024, Judge Jonathan Shamis said the assessment “was not carried out competently” and Goodban had therefore been jailed too long.

“From the court's perspective, the length of time you have been in custody, waiting for the proceedings to take place, is simply unacceptable,” Shamis told Goodban at a February hearing.

When Goodban was back before Shamis in April, Shamis told Goodban he had been “in detention for a ridiculously, unreasonably long period of time.”

When a second evaluation was finally conducted and Goodban was found competent, Shamis considered Goodban's time already served to sentence him. In this case, Goodban was taken into custody by the Avon Police Department in June 2022, after a neighbor accused Goodban of banging on their adjacent walls and yelling racial slurs at him.

Avon police officer John Mackey, after arriving at the scene, spoke with the duty prosecutor, who told Mackey that Goodban's punching the wall and shouting racial slurs constituted a violation of an existing protective order that the neighbor had obtained against Goodban. Goodban was taken into custody without use of force, but then refused to move.

“Mr. Goodban was not walking on his own, so I began escorting him using a C-shaped hand position on the back of his arm,” Mackey wrote in the June 19, 2022 arrest report .

Goodban later “threw himself with his forehead forward in a manner requiring a headbutt,” Mackey wrote. “Mr Goodban then looked at me, raised his left leg and punched me on my right leg, just below my knee. I felt immediate pain just below my knee on my right leg, to which I reacted by using a single expletive.

Shamis sentenced Goodban to four years of probation, but also imposed and suspended an automatic three-year incarceration if Goodban violates his probation. Goodban was released on May 30, but at that time he still had other misdemeanor charges against him.

On June 18, Goodban was arrested again on charges of harassment, disorderly conduct and reckless driving related to an alleged incident earlier that day at the Salvation Army in Avon. On Friday, Goodban was back in court before Shamis to address his issues of restoring jurisdiction in his other cases.

Goodban said he continues to deal with the ramifications of the initial evaluation and has another appointment scheduled with Vail Health in two weeks.

Shamis has scheduled Goodban's return to court for July 19.