Members of Colorado’s state and federal appellate courts addressed the legal community on Friday with the latest details about caseloads, internal changes and upcoming initiatives.

Chief Justice Monica M. Márquez, who has occupied the state’s top judicial role for almost one year, described an “interesting trend” of the Colorado Supreme Court receiving slightly fewer petitions to review Court of Appeals decisions compared to the period before the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, the state’s highest court is receiving approximately one petition per business day to intervene directly in trial court cases, sometimes urgently.

“We are constantly on our phones. I’m voting on vacation. I’m voting at 11 o’clock at night” on those petitions, she said, addressing the annual Appellate Practice Update sponsored by the Colorado Bar Association.

Márquez also noted the stable stream of appeals by prosecutors who, under state law, are permitted to seek Supreme Court review directly whenever a trial judge excludes evidence due to a constitutional violation. However, the court changed its rules last year to permit it to decide those cases through an order alone, and not with a precedent-setting opinion each time.

Those appeals, which can implicate the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable searches and seizures, “often have very convoluted facts,” Márquez said. “Often, we’re forced to write in this kind of really messy factual situation and it ends up producing some Fourth and Fifth Amendment jurisprudence that is disjointed.”

She added the Supreme Court is now trying to be more selective about when it issues precedential opinions in that category of criminal cases.

Judge Allison H. Eid of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, which hears appeals in federal cases from Colorado and five neighboring states, said filings in her court are trending upward. The 10th Circuit has seen a 25% increase in criminal appeals in the last five years and a doubling of bankruptcy appeals compared to last year, she described.

“I wish I could tell you why. I don’t know,” said Eid, who filled in for Chief Judge Jerome A. Holmes of Oklahoma. “Chief Justice Márquez and I were joking at the beginning — their caseload is going down and that’s because everybody is bringing the cases to us.”

Eid indicated U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has challenged federal courts “to get in the civic engagement game.” To that end, Eid said the 10th Circuit’s courthouse in Denver is updating the historical exhibits and the court is holding more oral arguments at local sites in the six-state region.

“The judiciary just had a conference on civic engagement a couple of weeks ago,” Eid added. “I went to it.”

Finally, Judge Rebecca R. Freyre of the state’s Court of Appeals noted lawmakers were unable to fund the request for three additional appellate judges this year amid a large budget shortfall. However, as of November, she said there were four more staff attorneys to help the court with deciding child welfare appeals within the legislative target of six months.

“It’s kind of too early to see what effect those additional people have had,” said Freyre, the deputy chief judge.

She added that the Court of Appeals has unveiled a “customer satisfaction survey,” with people being able to give feedback about how they were treated when interacting with various aspects of the court. Also, Chief Judge Gilbert M. Román will be in the first cohort of chief judges to undergo an evaluation of his performance in that leadership role.

Freyre said the court has implemented a training program for presiding judges, meaning those who oversee case assignments for each three-judge panel that decides appeals. She also reminded attorneys to fill out the performance evaluations of appellate judges prior to their retention elections.

“The responses are so low that it’s just not statistically meaningful to take anything out of those survey responses,” she said.

Although the Court of Appeals cleared its backlog resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, Freyre said she expects an uptick in appeals.

Finally, she said the court has expanded a working group, in which the chief judge meets with the public defender and attorney general’s offices to talk specifically about criminal appeals. The working group is discussing how to reduce the time it takes to decide criminal cases.

“It’s really high and we wanted to shorten it,” Freyre said.