legislature considering flawed discipline measures

​Good news first: Elimination of the criminal penalty for revealing the proceedings of the judicial discipline commission has been amended into HB 23-1019.
 
We’ve been lobbying for this change for eleven years. So, this is wonderful. Other measures are flawed, however, and we need you to contact legislators and let them know. For a more thorough detail of the flaws in this proposal, this is a link to an initial letter we sent to legislators. After House Judiciary amended the measure, this is a link to the letter we sent.
 
One would think that legislators would understand that the criminal penalty has intimidated a lot of people from coming forward about the problems with judicial discipline. You’d think they would remove the crime and then ask people to step forward about problems with the system. But unfortunately not.
 
The legislature is still going forward with its proposed constitutional amendment (HCR 23-1001) to reward the judicial branch for its scandal. Who's behind this proposed amendment? The current judicial discipline commission.
 
The amendment would give the state court administrator more power. It would allow the administrator to select what judges, lawyers, and citizens would be on an unnecessary adjudicatory panel to hear a discipline case.
 
The administrator would make his selection from a pool of lawyers, judges, and citizens who were appointed by the Supreme Court and the governor. When the administrator’s boss -- a Supreme Court justice -- is at issue, the administrator would pick the panel members from all Court of Appeals and district court judges. No citizens would be on that panel.
 
The amendment would insert a lot more conflicts of interest into the process. A complaint would have to go through even more judges for a judge to be disciplined.
 
The amendment does take the power to make rules away from the Supreme Court. We’ve lobbied for that for eleven years. But unfortunately, the amendment gives the power to make the rules to a panel of thirteen members, all of whom can be judges.
 
So how do you think that’s going to work out? More judges not only judging judges, but more judges making the rules to judge judges. It’s not really a significant change from the current system other than making it worse.
 
The rulemaking panel even chooses the burden of proof in discipline proceedings. The legislature should place into the constitution that the burden of proof is a preponderance of the evidence as it is in the 10 most ethical states.
 
And because judges are better than the rest of us, judges who have any disciplinary history whatsoever cannot be on the adjudicatory boards that determine whether a judge is disciplined. Citizens go to court every day in this state without knowing whether the judge presiding over them has been disciplined.
 
Judges, however, won’t be treated like lowly citizens. So there’s a big dose of hypocrisy in this proposed amendment.
 
At the House Judiciary hearing where these two proposals were heard, House minority leader Rep. Mike Lynch (R-Larimer and Weld counties) substituted himself in on the committee in the place of Rep. Stephanie Luck (R-El Paso county). It was a power play. Why?
 
Lynch is a sponsor of these proposals. His brother happens to be a county court judge in Larimer county. These proposals change the system for disciplining Supreme Court justices, but they will have very little change regarding lower court judges.
 
Essentially, these proposals will affect less than 1% of all complaints before the discipline commission. So, it would be business as usual for 99% of complaints filed with the discipline commission.
 
So HCR 23-1001 proposes adding more than 1,300 words to the state constitution to treat judges better than normal citizens are treated in court.
 
Oh, and the current ineffective discipline commission would remain in place. It would just serve in the role of investigator and prosecutor. These “changes” are what the commission has been lobbying for. David Prince, a judge from El Paso county, has taken a leading role in pursuing the proposals. So he’s ensuring he won’t be treated differently than at present.
 
For more info, here’s a link to an initial letter we sent legislators. After the House Judiciary Committee hearing, we sent this letter to legislators.
 
Please contact your legislators ASAP to let them know that HCR 23-1001 should be rejected or seriously amended. Here is a link to the contact information for legislators.

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