Among the many bad ideas we are likely to see on our November ballot is a proposal to put term limits on Colorado judges. It comes from John Andrews, former state senator and Republican candidate for governor in 1990. As it is, appellate judges are appointed by the governor. We vote on retention in the first general election after the appointment, and then every eight years for the Court of Appeals, and 10 years for the Supreme Court.
Andrews has written that “Colorado courts in recent years have overturned the sentences of convicted murderers on technicalities (the Harlan and Auman cases), trampled property rights (the Taylor Ranch case)… and denied the legislature its power to draw congressional districts.”
That’s quite an indictment. But Robert Harlan wasn’t “let off.” He’s not out on the streets after he kidnapped, raped and murdered Rhonda Maloney in 1994, and in the process shot and permanently paralyzed Jaquie Creazzo. Harlan is serving life in prison without parole.
His death sentence was overturned because the jurors who imposed it went beyond the evidence presented in court – some of them consulted a Bible during deliberations about Harlan’s sentence.
Of the Auman case, much has been written, but she wasn’t “let off” either. She was in police custody on Nov. 12, 1997, when Matthaeus Jaehnig shot and killed Denver police officer Bruce VanderJagt, then killed himself. She served eight years in prison before the state Supreme Court granted her a new trial on the grounds of improper jury instructions. There was no new trial, as she reached a plea-bargain.
If Andrews believes that the original Auman sentence was just, then he ought to be out stumping the state for Bill Ritter, Democratic candidate for governor – and the district attorney in Denver who decided to prosecute Auman for felony murder.
As for the Taylor Ranch, whose property rights were supposedly getting trampled? Those of Lou Pai, a former Enron executive who bought the ranch knowing that access to it had been the subject of litigation for decades? Or those the residents of San Luis whose ancestors had been promised access in the will of Carlos Beaubien, who lured those colonists north from Taos 160 years ago?
No matter which way the court ruled, it would have trampled somebody’s claim to property rights on those 77,000 acres.
Now, to the legislature’s power to draw congressional districts. After the 2000 census, which gave Colorado a new congressional seat, the legislature failed to draw new boundaries because the Republican House and the Democratic Senate could not agree. So a district court did the job.
I didn’t like it, since it put Chaffee County in the 5th District, dominated by Republican Colorado Springs, when we had been in the 3rd District, which is competitive and not dominated by any city. But we’d been in the 5th before, during the 1980s, and we lived through it.
After the 2002 elections, Republicans regained control of our state Senate, where Andrews became its presiding officer. He decided it was time to revisit redistricting to make sure Colorado sent more Republicans to Washington, just as Tom Delay had done in Texas. Senates are supposed to be places of sober deliberation; Andrews brought it before the Senate at the last possible moment, with a cacophony of clerks each reading a few pages of the bill simultaneously.
The state Supreme Court upheld the original redistricting, saying in effect that once every 10 years is often enough, and the U.S. Supreme Court let that stand because it declined to review the state decision.
There were good arguments on both sides of this issue – too bad Andrews didn’t allow them all to be presented in the state Senate when he rammed the bill through without real debate just as the session was ending.
Basically, Andrews argues that judges are “legislating from the bench.” That is, they’re making political instead of legal decisions. And how does he propose to cure that? Not just with a 12-year term limit, but also by having retention elections every four years – that is, making judges even more a part of the political process. Some cure.
Ed Quillen of Salida (ed@cozine.com) is a former newspaper editor whose column appears Tuesday and Sunday.
