District attorneys would get mandatory annual training in witness protection under a bill that will be introduced this week in the state legislature.
The bill would promote Colorado’s underused witness-protection program and would fulfill a mother’s wish to create a legacy to her son and his fiancée.
“I did not want my son’s death to be forgotten,” said Rhonda Fields, who approached Rep. Michael Garcia, D-Aurora, with the idea for the bill. “I don’t want him to be another soul lost to the criminal-justice system.”
Fields’ son, Javad Marshall-Fields, and his fiancée, Vivian Wolfe, were shot to death in June 2005, one week before Marshall-Fields was scheduled to testify in a murder trial.
An Arapahoe County grand jury last week indicted three men in the murders of Marshall-Fields and Wolfe, both 22-year-old graduates of Colorado State University.
Garcia, the bill’s sponsor, said the measure would protect witnesses and would maintain the integrity of the court system.
“When people are afraid to come forward and participate in the process, then the whole foundation of our judicial system is threatened,” he said.
Fields said her son was “doing the right thing,” but he wasn’t fully aware of the risks of being a witness in the case. He never told his mother that he was scared, and he wasn’t threatened until the day before he died.
“I sometimes wonder, ‘Why didn’t I get an attorney for my son?”‘ Fields said. “If I had done that, would we have known about the (witness-protection) program?”
Under the bill, the Colorado District Attorneys Council and law-enforcement agencies would be required to provide annual training about the state’s witness-protection program.
Dave Thomas, executive director of the council, said prosecutors need to be reminded that the program exists to reimburse counties for the costs of protecting witnesses.
“There is simply a lack of knowledge that Colorado has a witness-protection program,” Thomas said.
District attorneys also would be taught to evaluate the risks for witnesses by looking at prior arrests of suspects, gun permits and other factors.
Such training would remind district attorneys that witnesses are more than “tools to win a case,” Fields said.
The state entity overseeing the program would be named the Javad Marshall-Fields and Vivian Wolfe Witness Protection Program.
Lance Clem, spokesman for the Colorado Department of Public Safety, said the program was created 11 years ago with $250,000 in state money. Since then, funding has not been replenished and as of July 1, 2005, the program had $67,535 on hand.
The program refunds expenditures to counties that spend money on witness protection. Clem said the demand varies from year to year. The highest amount was $87,132 in 2001 and the lowest amount paid out was $23,669 in 2003.
Since July, the fund has been used to cover some costs on about 60 cases, Clem said, and the department has a $23,000 funding request pending with state lawmakers.
“We need to be able to save people like Javad,” Clem said. “If we could do anything to prevent that kind of thing in the future, then it’s got to be an important program.”
Staff writer Jim Hughes contributed to this report.
Staff writer Mark P. Couch can be reached at 303-820-1794 or mcouch@denverpost.com.
