Judicial reform: Action is required to achieve change
You can help by signing our petition, spreading the word, downloading a sign, getting active or donating
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Your help is needed to obtain judicial reform. The complacency of the people is a troubled judiciary's best friend. We can change the system, but only if more people join in an organized effort to create change. People who know there are problems with the current system must make others aware of the need for reform.
Please sign our petition to support nonpartisan reform. The more people who sign, the more likely legislators are to listen to judicial reform efforts. If you would chair a signature campaign for a future ballot initiative in your senate district, please contact us. In order to get a measure to change the law on the ballot, we need a lot of volunteers to get signatures. And to do that, we need a person in each state senate district to oversee a signature drive in that district. Below are signs you can download, print and place or post where you think they're fun or helpful. Contact your legislators and let them know that Colorado needs judicial reform and you support our efforts. Please contact us if you're interested in participating in an event. Or if you know of an event where you'd like to see us set up a booth and hand out information, please let us know. If you'd like us to come speak to your group, please contact us. We're happy to do presentations. Or if you have ideas regarding what we need to do, please let us know. And as always, your donations are appreciated to fund judicial reform efforts. |
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If you're interested in one of our T-shirts, we have some left over. Contact us and we'll see if there's a way we can get a T-shirt to you for free. Or if you're interested in us doing another T-shirt as a fundraiser, let us know.
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Our efforts have been followed by change.
We need change in Colorado. In order to change the system, we need to change the law. We have not yet been successful in changing the law sufficiently to make system-wide change. But our efforts have been followed by changes.
Before we started speaking up, there hadn't been a published case of judicial discipline since 1986. We started speaking out in 2012. After we put a spotlight on the dearth of published cases, the Colorado Supreme Court decided to publish a case where a judge stipulated to misconduct and agreed to leave the bench. In re Rand, 332 P.3d 115 (2014). Then we pointed out that there hadn't been a published case of judicial discipline that had actually been litigated since 1986. Subsequently, a case was litigated to completion and published even though the judge had agreed to leave the bench before the Supreme Court was involved. In re Booras, 2019 CO 16 (Colo. 2019). The case became public before the Supreme Court issued its opinion due to a story in The Denver Post based on the salacious claims from an ex-lover of the judge. And yet another case of judicial discipline was published regarding a judge's alcohol-related traffic offense. The case became public before the Supreme Court issued its opinion thanks to some good reporting in Grand Junction where the judge was located. The judge received the first public censure provided in Colorado for more than 30 years. In re Timbreza, 454 P.3d 217 (Colo. 2019). So before we started speaking out in 2012, there hadn't been a published case of judicial discipline in Colorado since 1986. Now there are a few published cases. That still leaves Colorado far, far behind other states in the amount of published cases, but it's something. It would appear the Supreme Court published a few cases to try to relieve pressure to make judicial discipline proceedings public. Make no mistake about it, however, Colorado needs to make all judicial discipline proceedings public. We've also publicized the conduct of some specific judges. We posted on Facebook and our previous website a story called "Watch a Judge Lie". The story was about Colorado Court of Appeals Judge Karen Ashby. She retired. The same post contained information about Colorado Court of Appeals Judge Robert Hawthorne. We also wrote some other posts regarding Hawthorne. He retired. Neither Ashby nor Hawthorne were mandatory retirement age. We also raised issues about a rule of judicial discipline that was changed after we voiced our concerns. And we objected when the state commission on judicial performance attempted to reduce the number of categories of people to whom confidential surveys were sent. The legislature kept the categories of people and required the commission to work harder at sending surveys to those groups of people. We cannot take credit for any of these changes. They could merely be coincidences. But like we said, our efforts have been followed by change. We hope to keep working for change, and with your help, we hope to successfully change the system to increase transparency, enhance accountability and remove conflicts of interest. |
Download and print or share signs to spread the word.
You can post the signs on a bulletin board, in your car, on social media, or wherever you think they might be helpful. A paint stir stick stapled between two of the signs makes a great hand-held sign like the ones at events seen in photos on this site. Spreading the word always helps.