抖阴ap

Protecting witnesses in criminal cases is crucial to the integrity of our system of justice.

That’s why we were taken aback by revelations that Colorado’s witness protection program is a scattershot effort that is little known and poorly funded. In fact, 16 witnesses or associates have been murdered since Colorado began its witness protection fund 12 years ago.

It’s time for Gov. Bill Ritter to appoint a task force to investigate how witness protection is funded, what constitutes adequate funding, the best way to tell witnesses that protection is available, and to examine the efficacy of the current program’s structure.

A three-day series by Denver Post reporter David Olinger pointed out many flaws in the system and detailed how witnesses were left to devise ways of protecting themselves.

Colorado’s program has a $50,000 budget this year and has expended, on average, $43,000 a year. The relatively small expenditures might lead one to conclude the state doesn’t have a problem with violence against or intimidation of witnesses. But it does.

A computer analysis by The Post showed that since 1998, Colorado prosecutors have filed more than 2,000 felony cases of crimes against witnesses.

The 2005 murders of Javad Marshall-Fields and his fiancée, Vivian Wolfe, were a chilling wakeup call about what some see as a serious problem of retribution against witnesses. Marshall-Fields saw a friend gunned down at a Fourth of July concert and was set to testify against the shooter. Men implicated in the murder stalked and threatened Marshall-Fields. At least one of them was a drug dealer with ties to a dangerous Chicago gang. Then, authorities say, they killed the couple. Marshall-

Fields’ mother said her son was never offered protection.

There are many issues for a state task force on witness protection to take on. These should be among the items on the agenda: