A federal judge in Denver has again delayed sentencing the head of a fentanyl-dealing family to give the defense more time to analyze the demographic makeup of the juries that indicted and convicted him.
Bruce Holder was convicted in April 2021 of charges related to dealing illicit fentanyl pills, including that his pills resulted in the death of one user.
But his sentencing has been repeatedly delayed in the 16 months since, as Holder's defense team prepares to challenge his conviction on the grounds that the juries that weighed his fate were not adequately demographically representative of the community.
Holder's sentencing was delayed from early May to late June, then again to mid-August. His sentencing has now been delayed to Nov. 10, after his defense attorneys asked Judge Christine M. Arguello for more time to allow an expert witness to continue looking at records related to jury selection and makeup.
Holder was arrested in Grand Junction in August 2018, nearly two years after he and his wife began transporting thousands of fentanyl pills from a small Mexican resort town to the Western Slope of Colorado. Prosecutors allege that, during those two years, fentanyl pills dealt by Holder and the family members who worked for him contributed to the deaths of at least nine people in the area.
His wife, ex-wife, daughter, stepdaughter, son and several friends were all arrested and charged with being part of the dealing network. Only Holder went to trial; his ex-wife died in June 2020, and the rest of his family and associates pleaded guilty, with many testifying against him. Holder is also the only one who has yet to be sentenced.
Prosecutors have asked Arguello, a federal judge in Denver, to sentence Holder to life in prison. A presentencing report also recommends life in prison.
Holder has long maintained that the juries that considered his fate were not demographically representative of the community. At the beginning of his April 2021 trial, his attorneys told Arguello that Holder would stand for the entirety of the trial to protest the lack of minorities on his jury. Earlier this year, his attorneys then asked the judge to release records related to those jurors as part of an anticipated challenge to how they were selected.
That challenge has yet to come. Holder's attorneys asked Arguello late last month to give their expert two more months to complete his analysis. Prosecutors, the defense attorneys wrote, "opposes further delay in this matter but recognizes that the Court assured the defendant he would be given an opportunity to litigate his anticipated motion prior to sentencing."
Arguello granted the request Monday, court records show.
