Attorney Daniel Kay was found to be one on of the top attorneys by his peers in 2014 and in 2016. His career was highlighted in Colorado Springs Style magazine and the following was in the 2016 edition of the magazine. Mr. Kay specializes in trial work and the areas of law he handles are auto and motorcycle / bicycle accident cases, criminal defense, and DUI defense. He has tried approximately 200 cases in front of juries in the state of Colorado, and he has over 25 year of experience litigating cases throughout Colorado including Federal Court cases. He is a former Deputy District Attorney for El Paso and Teller Counties.

Mr. Kay continuously explores new ways to litigate a case and is contacted by other lawyers to discuss trial tactics and techniques. This is the second time he has been selected as a top lawyer in Colorado Springs. He has been mentored by and tried cases with some of the top trial attorneys of Colorado springs such as Dan Zook, Bill Aspinwall, and Larry Schwartz. As a result he tries to always lend a helping hand to young attorneys.

Mr. Kay is active in many charities. He has been a team leader for the Habitat for Humanity annual bar fundraiser for over ten years. He was a coach for mock trial competitions for many years and one of his teams won the state title and many of his teams finished close to the top in the state competitions numerous times.

He has also volunteered to Judge the district and state mock trial competitions. Mr. Kay has worked with Pikes Peak legal services and the boys club with annual fundraisers. These would include “Night at the Ballpark” for Pikes peak legal services and an annual basketball league that includes attorneys, police and doctor teams as a Boys club fundraiser. He also helped start and was on the board of local in-patient drug and alcohol facility. He has devoted time to coaching wrestling, baseball and soccer teams with his children. He has recently been certified as a foster parent along with his wife.

Mr. Kay is on the Judicial Review Board, and belongs to Inns of Court, EL Paso Bar association, Colorado Bar association, Colorado Trial Lawyers Association, American Trial Lawyers Association and the Colorado Defense Bar.

Mr. Kay has been married to his wife, Linda for 25 years and has three children.

For more than a decade, David felt "like trash" having to register as a sex offender because he had consensual sex with his girlfriend when they were both minors. Now, with the help of a local attorney, those days are behind him. He was officially removed from the registry Jan. 2. "Now I feel like everybody else," David said. The Gazette agreed to use only his first name to protect his identity. David previously shared his struggle as a registered sex offender for a Gazette story about the impact the registry has on offenders. At the time, a U.S. district judge had ruled the Colorado Sex Offender Registration Act unconstitutional. State Attorney General Cynthia Coffman is appealing that ruling, arguing that the registry protects the public. David offered his story as proof of how the registry can do more harm than good. He described the struggle he faced finding a place to live, earning a living, falling in love and starting a family because of the label.

Friday, he leaned back in a comfy chair at The Gazette, rejoicing in life as a free man. "I cried," David recalled of the moment he was approved for removal. "I was like, (being labeled a sex offender) is not me, you can take that (expletive) away. "I don't have to worry if I want to go see a basketball game now."

The moment was two years in the making. That's how long David had been trying to get off the registry. After reading David's plight in The Gazette, local attorney Daniel Kay took his case and quickly found out why: There was no precedent for a case like this.

Then 17-year-old David's Missouri relationship with his girlfriend, who turned 14 while they were together, was a misdemeanor sex crime because in that state the age of consent is 17 - no exceptions. But Colorado honors the "Romeo and Juliet" exception, which protects young people from criminal charges in consensual sexual activity with other teens over age 14 but under age 18. Federal law also shows leniency toward sexual relations between two people ages 12 to 18, as long as they're not more than four years apart (David was three years and 10 months older than his then-girlfriend).

So by Colorado's standards, David did not commit a crime. "I've been doing this 30 years, and I've never seen anything like that," Kay said. "How do you even get a case like that in front of a court?" Kay said he had to "reinvent the wheel" and file a civil lawsuit to get David's petition heard. It took four months to fight through, but neither the 4th Judicial District Attorney's Office nor District Judge Thomas Kane disagreed.

That still wasn't the end of David's struggle, though. When he presented the judge's order to the Colorado Springs police, with whom he'd been registering for four years, they rejected it because the electronic filing lacked the judge's signature. "They kept telling me I'm wrong, that this can't be," David said. Kay filed a second motion to end the battle. "It was just an unusual case," Kay said.

While David's sex conviction will remain a matter of public record - the criminal case was not sealed - he no longer has to check in with law enforcement, have them approve his residence or identify as a registered offender. The freedom has opened doors David never dared crack. He and his fiancée moved out of their one-bedroom apartment in a high-crime area in downtown Colorado Springs and into a three-bedroom apartment in a new complex to the east. David said he's also confident the couple can secure shared custody of her kids.

He'd previously undergone a number of assessments, including a polygraph, to prove he wasn't a threat to the children, but the case has been on hold while the children's biological father is deployed. "For his own mental stability, this has changed everything - his self-esteem, his ability to move on," Kay said.

For David, the experience also further confirmed that the sex offender registry "needs to be redone nationwide." He approves of a registry for sexually violent predators - the most dangerous offenders - requiring public notification every place they move. But for people with minor sex crimes, like him, the registry caused more harm than good, he said. David was able to rise above it, but he wonders how many others don't. "After you battle for so long, you just want to give up," David said. "I'm glad the ride is over with."