A wake-up call for rule change

What do triple ax murderers and child predators have in common in Jefferson County? The protection of Colorado’s professional conduct rules for attorneys that have been so badly misinterpreted over the years that today they are a detriment to the safety of our children.

Certainly Colorado attorneys should be barred from engaging “in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation.” A few bright lines come to mind: a civil attorney going undercover to dredge up evidence in a lawsuit or a defense attorney misrepresenting a plea deal to a defendant for nefarious reasons.

Heinous grounds for disbarment, clearly.

But the two cases out of Jefferson County fall far short of that bright line.

We recently learned that Jefferson County District Attorney Pete Weir is shutting down his highly successful sting operation, nicknamed CHEEZO. In more than a decade, the child sex offender internet investigations unit has arrested and convicted more than 900 offenders.

To do the work, law enforcement officers would visit online chat rooms frequented by kids, pretend to be young teen girls and then wait to be contacted by grown men attempting to lure them into meetings.

But one of the offenders CHEEZO caught has filed a notice of complaint with the Colorado Supreme Court Standing Committee on the Rules of Professional Conduct. Weir said he was told if that complaint were filed, the board would likely rule that employees of the DA’s office cannot use deceit to snare these online sex offenders.

At issue is the fact that the CHEEZO unit was funded by the DA’s office. Had the investigators been working for a sheriff’s office, the rules would have allowed them to do their work.

We first opined on the interpretation of the rule in 2001 when an assistant district at- torney, Mark Pautler, pretended to be a defense attorney on the phone to then at-large triple ax-murderer William “Cody” Neal.

The Pautler case has set precedent for the Weir case.

Pautler was present when law enforcement had Neal on the phone trying to convince him to turn himself in. Neal said he wanted to speak to a public defender first. But with none readily available, Pautler got on the phone and assumed the persona of defense attorney “Mark Palmer.”

Yes, Pautler lied. But he didn’t try to elicit details to help the prosecution from Neal, and he didn’t maintain the charade a moment longer than necessary to secure Neal into custody.

We disagreed that his laudable actions should’ve been prevented by the ethics rule.

Such a view was shared by others faced with similar dilemmas. Former Gov. Bill Ritter, then a district attorney himself, testified in Pautler’s defense, saying he had once promised an armed robber that he wouldn’t prosecute. After the danger had passed, Ritter did prosecute.

When Pautler was disciplined by the Colorado Supreme Court and put on an attorney practice version of probation for a year, we were aghast: “So here are the rules: Don’t save any more lives for the balance of this year, Mr. Pautler, and you will be restored to the ranks of braindead pettifoggers for whom the letter of the law is all and the spirit is nothing.”

Strong words indeed, but the rule has remained unchanged all these years. Today Weir hopes an exception will be added for law enforcement activities so that his team can continue netting these bad guys. We do too.

But until wiser heads prevail, here are the rules: Don’t catch any more pedophiles, Mr. Weir, and you won’t get your wrist slapped by this board of stubborn counsel who had 15 years to amend this failed rule and did nothing.