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

The state Supreme Court will have a busy week with oral arguments and travel to southern Colorado, plus the state’s U.S. senators spoke about their process and philosophy for filling recent federal judicial vacancies.

Supreme Court returns

•  Beginning tomorrow, the Supreme Court will hold oral arguments in seven cases, plus one rules hearing, plus one trip to Pueblo for the Courts in the Community program. The cases are:

Parker Water and Sanitation District et al. v. Rein et al. and City of Sterling et al. v. Lazy D Grazing Association et al.: These are two water court appeals involving nontributary groundwater.

Martinez v. People: Does Colorado’s “Make My Day” defense authorizing deadly force against home intruders apply to reckless conduct by the shooter?

People v. Romero: Was the Court of Appeals correct to order a new trial after a trial judge openly disputed the prosecutor’s explanation for removing a juror of color, but allowed it to happen anway?

People v. Lopez: Does a defendant appealing his conviction have to show how his case was negatively affected by his lawyer, who was in the unusual situation of being prosecuted by the same district attorney’s office as his client?

Terra Management Group, LLC et al. v. Keaten et al.: At what point should a Littleton apartment manager have preserved evidence related to its tenants’ meth exposure?

Dhyne v. People: Could police search a man’s computer because it had access to the IP address being used to download child pornography?

Rules hearing: The justices will hold a hearing on Tuesday afternoon about proposed changes to the rules of professional conduct governing lawyers’ referral fees.

The making of the U.S. District Court

•  Over the past three years, the Biden administration has appointed five judges on Colorado’s federal trial court. It’s unusually high turnover, and similarly noteworthy is the speed with which U.S. Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper have facilitated filling the seats. They spoke to Colorado Politics for a novel conversation about how they approached the task while honoring the administration’s expectations. Here is an excerpt:

Hickenlooper said his goal has been to appoint the best possible candidates, while also taking time to ensure diversity in the candidate pool. Upon joining Bennet in the Senate, Hickenlooper suggested refreshing the membership of an advisory committee Bennet had used to screen judicial candidates previously.

“I wanted to have a couple people there that I knew well and trusted their opinions within my sense of priorities,” he said. …

“The directive was to look for candidates who met the directives from the White House. That was important and that was a factor when we were looking at candidates, that we honored that,” said April Jones, the committee’s co-chair. “Not followed it, but it was in our minds.”

Although some Democrats viewed Biden’s presidency as an opportunity to “rebalance” the federal judiciary after the Trump administration’s installment of 234 judges in just four years, Colorado’s senators and the leaders of their advisory committee distanced themselves from the idea that putting progressives on the bench locally was a priority.

“I was motivated to fill the vacancies that occurred because justice delayed is justice denied and I really believe that,” Bennet said.

“I think we were in some way balancing the court just because in a lot of our appointments, there weren’t people with similar backgrounds on the bench,” said Hickenlooper. “But there was never politics. Again, we didn’t ask about how you stand on a woman’s right to choose or how do you stand on issues around how to deal with protesters.”

Licensed legal paraprofessionals

•  Last year, the Colorado Supreme Court approved a framework for a new category of legal workers: licensed legal paraprofessionals. The first class took their exam last week and the Supreme Court will hold a swearing-in ceremony next month for those who meet the LLP requirements. Colorado Politics spoke with one of the people behind the program’s development, Angela R. Arkin, about what comes next. Here is an excerpt:

Colorado Politics: Are most of the LLP applicants currently paralegals?

Arkin: Most of them are. There are a small number who are longtime, experienced judicial staff, but the challenge is that we have an expectation that the individuals who are applying for this licensure have actual experience working with actual people going through dissolution of marriage, protection orders, those kinds of things. So, it’s pretty hard to get that experience if you’re just a judicial clerk.

CP: What will you be looking for during the first six months to a year of LLPs?

Arkin: We’re hoping to get positive feedback — not positive per se, but feedback that can help us improve the program. And we are going to be actively seeking that from the LLPs themselves, from lawyers and judges and other people who work with them, hopefully from clients. …

We’re hopeful there will be a lot of things that we learn that we can improve on going forward, but this is the first round. We’re hopeful that many of these folks who apply will be successful and that the citizens of Colorado will get a good experience from it, and it will be helpful in getting cases through the courts and/or resolved in mediation, which is also huge.

Heard on appeal

•  The state’s Court of Appeals ruled for the first time that COVID-19 is an “occupational disease” for which benefits can be awarded under Colorado’s workers’ compensation law.

•  Repeated phone calls, even if they go unanswered, qualify as “contacts” that could render a person guilty of stalking, the Court of Appeals concluded.

•  Even though a man was convicted of a sex offense 37 years ago in a different state and he wasn’t required to register as a sex offender at the time, he still has to register for life in Colorado, the Court of Appeals ruled while acknowledging the seeming unfairness.

•  Weld County prosecutors failed to prove a “conspiracy” took place when the only act was a onetime, aborted drug transaction for an ounce of meth, the Court of Appeals decided.

In federal news

•  By 2-1, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit concluded the Biden administration had the authority to require outdoor recreation operators on federal lands to pay their guides $15 per hour plus overtime. However, one judge, Allison H. Eid, provided the U.S. Supreme Court with a hook to potentially step in and strike down as unconstitutional the key law giving presidents authority over government contracting.

•  The 10th Circuit decided a trial judge used the wrong legal standard when dismissing a child’s sex discrimination lawsuit against his Colorado Springs charter school. The court reinstated the claims and the school must now provide a persuasive justification for banning only boys from wearing earrings.

•  Two Colorado Springs officers must face a civil jury trial over whether they unlawfully arrested a woman for failing to disperse from a crime scene when they allegedly lacked probable cause to do so, the 10th Circuit concluded.

•  The 10th Circuit agreed Denver Public Schools likely infringed on a man’s First Amendment rights by banning him from school property in response to his critical and profane speech.

•  Even though a search warrant didn’t list the backyard garage where a man was sleeping and federal prosecutors conceded the warrant didn’t include the garage, the 10th Circuit said police had authority to search the sleeping man after all.

•  A federal judge declined to block Colorado’s 2023 ban against “ghost guns,” concluding the plaintiffs didn’t have standing to challenge certain aspects of the law and the remaining parts didn’t implicate the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.

•  Denver police didn’t have the necessary justification to search a man’s backpack, meaning the illegally possessed handgun inside could no longer be used as evidence against him, a federal judge ruled.

•  A judge dismissed four Fort Collins police officers from a lawsuit stemming from the 2020 arrests of Black Lives Matter protesters.

Vacancies and appointments

•  The governor has appointed Montezuma County Attorney and Dove Creek municipal judge Ian P. MacLaren to the Dolores County Court, where he succeeds Judge Matthew G. Margeson.

•  Applications are due by July 18 to succeed retiring District Court Judge Lynette M. Wenner in the 11th Judicial District (Chaffee, Custer, Fremont and Park counties).

•  Applications are due by July 29 to succeed an unusually large number of retiring Denver District Court judges, all of whom have been in their positions for less than 10 years and one of whom has not even faced voters for retention yet. The judges are Christine C. Antoun, David H. Goldberg and Jennifer B. Torrington.

•  There are four nominees to succeed departing District Court Judges Marla Prudek and Scott Sells in the Fourth Judicial District (El Paso and Teller counties): Brian Patrick Fields, Magistrate Hilary A.P. Gurney, Theodore P. McClintock and Magistrate Dennis Luzinas McGuire.

•  There are two finalists to succeed retiring Lincoln County Court Judge Truston Lee Fisher: Crowley County Court Judge Jeremy P. Boyce and Miles A. Cabral.

•  There are three finalists to succeed retiring Weld County Court Judge Meghan Saleebey: Larimer County Magistrate Cara Michelle Boxberger, Daniel Ralph Delaney and Magistrate Audrey A. Galloway.

•  There are three candidates to succeed retiring Chief Judge J. Steven Patrick in the Seventh Judicial District (Delta, Gunnison, Hinsdale, Montrose, Ouray and San Miguel counties): Magistrate Kellie L. Staritt, former Montrose County Court Judge Bennet A. Morris and Alex San Filippo-Rosser.

•  Colorado’s Judicial Department has hired Manuel Banks as the manager of culture and leadership. His role will be to lead diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility initiatives. Banks holds an MBA from the University of Denver.

Going on break

•  Court Crawl will take the next week off and will return later in May.