Welcome to Court Crawl, Colorado Politics’ roundup of news from the third branch of government.

This week the state Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case of national significance, plus an attorney has been disciplined for the improper use of artificial intelligence for apparently the first time in Colorado.

Next step in disqualification case

?  Readers may recall that last month, a Denver judge decided Donald Trump remains eligible to appear on Colorado’s 2024 presidential primary ballot. Even though he engaged in an insurrection as president, the judge ultimately found the 14th Amendment’s disqualification mechanism did not apply to him.

?  Both sides appealed to the state Supreme Court and this Wednesday, there will be oral arguments on the issue. While Colorado is not the first state where courts have considered the question of Trump’s eligibility, this case could catch the eye of the U.S. Supreme Court on appeal.

?  Remember that in order to keep Trump off the ballot, the Supreme Court would need to find state judges have jurisdiction to enforce the 14th Amendment, that Trump engaged in an insurrection and that the 14th Amendment applies to him, among other things. Arguments will start at 1 p.m. and will be live streamed here.

ChatGPT proves untrustworthy in court

?  An attorney, up against a deadline, searched on ChatGPT for cases that supported his client’s position. He inserted the citations into a legal brief without checking them. It turns out, however, that the artificial intelligence generated artificial cases, and the lawyer recently received a suspension for submitting false citations and then lying about it.

?  The head of the attorney regulation office told Colorado Politics it was the first such discipline case to her knowledge involving the use of AI in Colorado. The discipline also came shortly after Justice Melissa Hart publicly acknowledged the Supreme Court needs to start thinking about the implications of AI in the legal profession.

Heard on appeal

 ?  Even though a suspect confessed over the phone after detectives assured him they were “not going to look for” him, the state’s Court of Appeals decided police didn’t coerce the confession and his statements could be used at his murder trial.

 ?  Arapahoe County prosecutors crossed the line by suggesting jurors shouldn’t believe the defendant because he invoked his constitutional right to silence upon his arrest, the Court of Appeals concluded in ordering a new trial.

 ?  The Court of Appeals declined to retroactively apply a major Supreme Court decision governing the admission of evidence in criminal cases, finding the decision did not amount to a change in constitutional interpretation. 

?  An Arapahoe County judge seemed intent on embarrassing a defense lawyer in front of the jury, the Court of Appeals conceded, but his conduct did not warrant reversal of the defendant’s convictions.

?  A man convicted of murder in Fremont County will receive a new trial because the judge gave the jury an instruction that improperly shifted the prosecution’s burden of proof onto the defendant.

?  There was no basis for a Denver judge to convert a mother and father’s jury trial for child neglect to a bench trial simply because they failed to show up at a pretrial hearing, the Court of Appeals decided.

In federal news

?  A former Florence city employee may proceed to sue for retaliation, prompted by her decision to blow the whistle on alleged misconduct, a federal judge ruled.

?  An incarcerated man had not credibly claimed that corrections officers were aware he faced a substantial risk of harm due to his cellmate’s sexual orientation, a judge concluded.

?  Under a new Colorado law enacted at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, jurors will decide whether a medical contractor at the La Plata County jail retaliated against a nurse who voiced her concerns about her coworkers’ failure to follow public health orders.

?  A Lakewood police sergeant cannot be held liable for shooting and killing a man he was trying to evacuate from a burning basement.

?  A federal judge told Centura Health to stop withholding company-wide pay increases to the nurses at a Longmont hospital after they voted to unionize.

?  Although Colorado maintained that state law prohibited it from releasing workers’ compensation data to the U.S. Social Security Administration for an audit, a federal judge ordered the state to hand over the information.

Vacancies and appointments

?  The governor has appointed Timothy J. Lane, policy analyst and staff attorney with the Colorado District Attorneys’ Council, to the Gilpin County Court, where he will succeed former Judge David Taylor.

?  Applications are due by Dec. 22 to succeed part-time Moffat County Court Judge Brittany A. Schneider, who the governor recently appointed to the district court bench.

?  The chief justice has appointed District Court Judge Kyle Seedorf to be the new chief judge of the 17th Judicial District (Adams and Broomfield counties). Seedorf has spent almost four years as a judge, and he will succeed retiring Chief Judge Don Quick in January.