News coverage of two high-profile sex-crime cases in the Denver area faded after suppression by judges.
Douglas County sheriff’s officers had arrested one of their own — Deputy Robert “Mike” French — in the early hours of Feb. 9, 2013, on suspicion of trying to lure a 16-year-old boy into a sexual relationship.
It was a Saturday and French, then 41, was taken to the Douglas County Detention Facility at about 3:30 a.m. He was kept there and at the Arapahoe County detention facility until he was to appear before a judge two days later.
On Monday morning, before any word that French had been arrested was made public, Senior Deputy District Attorney Jay Williford asked a judge to suppress the case and all the information surrounding French’s arrest and the crimes he was accused of committing, court records show. The judge agreed.
Later that day the Douglas County Sheriff’s Department, which wasn’t subject to the order, announced the arrest and said it had fired French. A handful of television news stories followed — but after that, the case proceeded without public notice until French’s sentencing hearing, which was covered by a local newspaper. The case would remain suppressed for more than four years.
French’s case — that of a law enforcement officer charged and eventually convicted and sentenced in a sex crime — is one of many The Denver Post found in Colorado in which the suppression of information by the courts coincided with little to no news coverage after the arrest an- nouncement. Whether or not limiting publicity is the intent of a suppression, that is often the result.
The reasons for the suppression in French’s case and a companion case involving a Douglas County school teacher: Investigators were worried documents might be destroyed, witnesses could be tampered with and any other suspects would flee, according to the prosecutors’ motion.
In issuing the order, District Judge Shay Whitaker said “the release of any information … (is) contrary to the public interest at this time,” according to a copy of the Feb. 11, 2013, order.
The case against French would remain suppressed from public view for another 1,516 days, The Denver Post found, long after he had pleaded guilty, was sentenced to a probation term, lost his deputy badge and registered as a sex offender.
It was unsuppressed on April 7, 2017, after Whitaker was asked by an unidentified person why her original order was still in place. She held a hearing to find out, according to the Colorado Court Administrator’s
office in response to questions from The Post, then she opened the court files.
In all the time it was suppressed, French’s name never appeared on public record searches at courthouses in Colorado, though both are registered sex offenders. There’s not even a mug shot from his arrest.
“Sometimes a district attorney in an ongoing investigation will ask the records remain suppressed to protect the integrity of an ongoing investigation,” French’s defense attorney, Kevin Ellmann, told The Post. “But typically criminal proceedings are matters of public record, for the public to maintain a check and balance of the justice system and ensure it’s open and fair, and that the administration of justice is fair.”
Prosecutors say they don’t know why French’s case was suppressed so long, but that it’s likely someone forgot to ask Whitaker to unsuppress it, though their original request was for an ongoing investigation that ultimately yielded no additional arrests.
And defense lawyers weren’t in any rush to draw attention to French, either, arguing the case should stay suppressed.
“He didn’t want his name all over the paper and it was embarrassing,” Alison Ruttenberg, French’s lawyer on his case, told The Post. “It’s law enforcement and he’s got a bigger target on his back. We were worried about vigilantes.”
The Post found dozens of other cases in which criminal defendants were convicted and sentenced for crimes the public has been obstructed from seeing. Consider former Adams 14 school board president Robert Vashaw, 52, who was sentenced last June to a year in jail — he was released after six months — for trying to lure a 12-yearold girl to have sex with him.
Though Vashaw was captured in September 2016 during a sting operation — the 12-year-old was actually a deputy posing online as a child — and news of his arrest was highlighted in a single television report, neither prosecutors nor defense attorneys had asked for the matter to be suppressed.
It was a visiting judge from El Paso County — District Judge Sylvia Manzanares — who chose to suppress the case after denying a television station’s request to bring a camera into the courtroom to film the proceedings. Records of her order or her reasons why the case should be suppressed also are suppressed.
“At first appearance Judge Manzanares had … suppressed the file and denied the motion for EMC (expanded media coverage),” according to prosecutors’ notes from the hearing obtained by The Post. “She said she did it on her own because she came in Monday morning not knowing anything about the case and had concerns about releasing information.”
The matter never came up again and details of the case against Vashaw, who resigned his Adams 14 position and would spend a year in jail after pleading guilty to attempted sex assault on a child and a charge of child abuse as part of a plea deal, have remained hidden under court-ordered secrecy. And until The Post began its inquiry, Vashaw’s conviction did not appear in any public search of state court records.
The only story about Vashaw’s sentence was from a local television station whose reporter was at each court hearing.