STATE LOOKS TO ADDING TRANSPARENCY
Judicial Branch considering issue of suppressed cases
Court orders to suppress lawsuits and criminal cases in Colorado, as well as the legal reasons behind them, are to be made public under a new set of criteria being considered by the state’s Judicial Branch.
Court orders to suppress lawsuits and criminal cases in Colorado, as well as the legal reasons behind them, are to be made public under a new set of criteria being considered by the state’s Judicial Branch.
If approved, the standards would apply to any case in which there is a request to keep information hidden from the public, although it’s unclear whether it would be mandatory or simply a recommendation.
“It could be a Chief Justice directive or merely guidance to the judges. That’s not been decided,” Court Administrator Christopher Ryan told The Post. “One you don’t have to follow; the other you do.”
The suggested changes are in response to a series of Denver Post stories that revealed how thousands of cases across the state were suppressed from public view, hidden behind judges’ orders to keep them that way.
The Post found that suppression orders and the lawyers’ requests that offered the reasons for the suppression are themselves suppressed from public inspection.
Many of the suppressed cases, The Post reported, were criminal convictions in which defendants were arrested, charged, prosecuted and imprisoned — some for felonies as violent as homicide and sexual assault — while the entire matter remained hidden from public scrutiny.
The newspaper also found that dozens of lawsuits filed against attorneys alleging varying forms of misconduct were being suppressed, most of them after settlements were reached, keeping details of the cases locked away. That’s in contrast to other professions, such as doctors and architects, which are required to report settlements and verdicts in malpractice cases to state regulators.
Ryan said his office was unaware of a computer glitch that treated suppressed cases as sealed ones and hid their details from all public computers used for record searches.
“It was an 18yearold bit of programming that no one knew about,” Ryan said. “I was shocked.”
He said the department is reviewing the process of how suppressions are issued.
“We want to look at the matters and how they’re handled procedurally,” he said. “When an order of suppression is issued, there should be a transparent public order.”
Suppressions in a criminal case should be for a specific reason, such as the execution of an arrest warrant or “crucial to moving the case along,” Ryan said.
The Post found many suppressions were issued to protect wit
nesses or to allow for an investigation to continue unimpeded. In some cases, the suppression order has never been lifted.
“You uncovered how no one was reviewing the initial suppression order put into place,” Ryan said. “There must be a finite timeline.”
Suppressions of a civil lawsuit are to include the length of time they will remain restricted, but there is no equivalent criteria for criminal cases.
Whether the criteria will become a binding directive issued by Chief Justice Nathan Coats is to be de termined, Ryan said.
Also unclear is whether the new criteria will be retroactive, opening judicial rulings on the more than 3,000 cases that are still suppressed. David Migoya: 3039541506, dmigoya@denverpost.com or @davidmigoya