Last year, Colorado Supreme Court Chief Justice Brian Boatright insisted that the commission investigating allegations of judicial misconduct issue a subpoena for information to prevent the media — and by extension the public — to have access to details of the scandal investigation, according to the emails obtained. by The Denver Gazette.
The push to thwart media coverage came amid what members of the Colorado Commission on Judicial Discipline had described as a methodical effort by the Judiciary Department to impede or block the commission’s work in investigating the scandal. since it erupted in February 2021.
Boatright said “very emphatically” during a meeting in a parking lot with William Campbell, then executive director of the Colorado Commission on Judicial Discipline, that a subpoena from the commission would remove any argument the media would need to access the information they had requested, as well as to stop any possible leaks that “could disrupt the process”.
“He does not want to give (the information) easily,” Campbell wrote in an email revealing to commission members his conversation with Boatright on July 29, 2021, “lest the press ask for it and he There isn’t a credible way to refuse to provide it.
Campbell’s email did not describe any legal basis for why Boatright believed a subpoena was otherwise necessary.
The Judiciary Department said through a spokesperson on Monday that “the Department and the Chief Justice have taken no action for the purpose of withholding information from the media or the public.”
In his email, Campbell also said Boatright told him he was “personally encouraging the Attorney General” to find a way to represent “the commission in its investigation, bypassing the need for an outside special counsel that the commission was looking to hire because of conflicts. of interest. A second email that Campbell sent the same day to commission members described a discussion he had had with the Attorney General’s office about how he frequently sits on both sides of a legal fight and was seriously considering simultaneously representing the Disciplinary Committee on one side and the Supreme Court. Court on the other hand.
The emails were only partially disclosed last August in a letter the commission wrote to a legislative panel conducting hearings on potential reform of the state’s judicial discipline process. They give a fuller assessment of why the commission issued a subpoena in late 2021 – the first time it had done so.
The department, through a spokesperson, said on Monday that the garage meeting “was a sincere attempt to explain to the Commission how it could access documents and information. Any characterization of the meeting as other thing is an attempt to sensationalise a bona fide discussion.”
The Denver Gazette requested the emails in September from the Judiciary Department under its Open Records Rules and, despite having to pay a fee of more than $300, received only redacted copies of correspondence. The department previously obtained the commission’s emails because of the commission’s August letter to the legislative committee. The commission is not subject to open archive laws and almost all of its work is done in secret.
The department said it redacted emails it provided to The Denver Gazette because they contained privileged or confidential information, but generally would not describe what it was.
On Monday, he said in an email that he “did not release the emails in an unredacted form because the Department’s position is that the redacted information relates to Commission proceedings and a specific investigation, and as such are confidential under the Constitution, statute, and court rules.”
The newspaper appealed directly to the commission, asking it to release the emails it had already provided to the judicial department because they were not considered confidential. The commission provided the emails to the newspaper on Friday.
Campbell wrote that Boatright “seemed very sincere” in the garage discussion, which appears to have occurred as Boatright “was about to leave”.
“That’s why they’re suggesting a subpoena since they might grant it to us and deny it to others,” Campbell wrote.
Campbell retired in December 2021 and was replaced by Christopher Gregory the following month.
The commission issued a subpoena in January 2022, saying the document production it had requested from the department was not done voluntarily. He did not say that the subpoena appears to have been the department’s desire all along, according to the emails.
In its Monday statement, the department said it “has repeatedly stated that a subpoena was necessary to comply with the department’s contractual obligations, and that an agreement on the handling of privileged records was necessary to avoid renounce all privileges”.
The commission had complained for months, sometimes openly, about difficulties it was having in obtaining information from the ministry as part of its investigation into allegations of judicial misconduct.
The investigation hinges on a February 2021 newspaper article that uncovered allegations of a quid pro quo scheme in which the department awarded a multimillion-dollar contract to a former senior department official who threatened to sue for sex discrimination. .
Subsequent investigations by companies hired by the department refuted these claims and determined that no quid pro quo contract existed, although the investigations found that misconduct and mismanagement were prevalent throughout the contracting process.
When news of the contract scheme broke, the Disciplinary Committee quickly embarked on an investigative effort to determine if any of the misconduct allegations were true.
The court also made public statements that the charges could not be true, a decision that has concerned some legal experts who noted that the court could eventually be called upon to issue an opinion on any disciplinary outcome.
The commission’s August letter to the legislative committee described a methodical effort by the department to impede or block the commission’s work in its investigation of the scandal.
It laid out almost a step-by-step process in which the department intentionally blocked the commission at every turn, from a delay in producing documents to arguing that the commission had no right to it in the first place.
The ministry at the time said the claims were misrepresentations and misquotes that mistakenly implied ill intent on the part of its leaders.
The legislative committee released a pair of recommendations last month — including an electoral referendum to amend the Colorado Constitution — on how the disciplinary process for judges should change.
If approved, the referendum would remove the state Supreme Court from its oversight authority over the commission, make the now-secret process public when formal charges are filed, and create a three-person panel to hear cases and render discipline.
