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

The state Supreme Court is back this week for a short schedule of oral arguments, plus the judges of Colorado’s federal trial court have granted themselves the authority to discipline lawyers in new ways.

On the docket

•  On Wednesday, the Supreme Court has three cases and one public hearing scheduled:

Densmore v. People and Frazee v. People: Both cases ask whether a child welfare worker who questions a suspect in custody must first provide a Miranda warning.

League of Women Voters et al. v. Board of County Commissioners: Does Weld County need to redo its process of drawing county commissioner districts because it failed to follow state law in adopting its recent maps?

Public hearing about changes to the rules governing admission to the practice of law: There is a proposal on the table addressing how disability-based accommodations are to be granted for those taking the bar exam or paraprofessional licensing test. The Supreme Court has received several written comments arguing the proposed process flies in the face of state law and imposes unnecessary burdens on applicants to prove their disability.

New rules

•  Colorado’s U.S. District Court, like other federal trial courts, has a packet of rules laying out how things are supposed to work. In addition, each district judge and magistrate judge has practice standards to put litigants on notice about specific courtroom procedures, which the judges set for themselves.

•  Last week, the court amended its local rules with an eyebrow-raising provision: Lawyers may already get suspended or even disbarred for violating the rules of professional conduct applicable to all Colorado attorneys, but they can now get in trouble for violating any conduct protocols a judge chooses to include in their individual practice standards.

•  While the upshot is that judges can give teeth to their personal expectations of decorum, there are seemingly no guardrails for how minor a courtroom infraction can be to trigger discipline.

•  “I think the court’s amendment is consistent with the Rules of Professional Conduct, which already suggest that a knowing violation of a court order subjects an attorney to discipline,” said attorney Deborah Yim. “It is interesting, though, that the amendment does not seem to explicitly distinguish between an intentional and knowing violation versus inadvertent non-compliance. This raises a question about whether good-faith mistakes in following practice standards could trigger disciplinary proceedings.” 

Heard on appeal

•  The Court of Appeals ordered a new sexual assault trial for a defendant who argued one juror should’ve been dismissed because he was distracted by a traumatic event outside the courtroom and missed crucial testimony.

•  A Mesa County judge wrongly ordered a defendant to pay $3,600 for DNA testing, even though the test results arrived after the man already pleaded guilty and the case was closed.

•  Jurors didn’t know that a man in Montezuma County denied responsibility for the bags of drugs that sheriff’s deputies mysteriously found on him after three pat-down searches. The Court of Appeals ordered a new trial, believing the prosecution presented a skewed narrative of the arrest.

•  Colorado’s consumer protection law for motor vehicles requires vehicle owners to write down a demand for their damages before suing a vehicle repair facility. But how specific does the letter need to be? The Court of Appeals had three slightly different views on the subject.

•  A Jefferson County judge wrongly terminated the parental rights of an incarcerated father, the Court of Appeals found, because his treatment plan was impossible to comply with.

•  The Supreme Court will review a second case implicating municipalities’ ability to set harsher penalties for local ordinance violations that are identical to offenses under state law.

•  Court of Appeals Judge Ted C. Tow III walked lawyers through the importance of respecting the gender identities of those they interact with, as a matter of both professionalism and compliance with the law.

In federal news

•  Judge Timothy M. Tymkovich of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit recently moderated a discussion about public nuisance lawsuits, which have sought to address pollution, gun violence, tobacco use and climate change.

•  Colorado Supreme Court Justice William W. Hood III facilitated a presentation about the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent precedent shifting power from federal agencies to judges to say what kind of regulations an ambiguous law allows for.

Miscellaneous proceedings

•  An extradition hearing concluded in London for a Colorado Springs woman accused of murder, with a judge to decide the issue in January. 

•  An El Paso County judge may dismiss a misdemeanor case against the mother of the defendant who killed five people at an LGBTQ nightclub in 2022.