FORT COLLINS, Colo.—Two judges who were censured for their work as prosecutors in a botched murder trial are being recommended for retention as judges.
Voters will decide in November whether Larimer County District Judges Jolene Blair and Terry Gilmore should serve another six-year term. A judicial retention commission Tuesday unanimously voted to recommend both judges for retention, noting their “outstanding” performance as judges.
The state Supreme Court censured them in 2008, saying that when they were prosecutors, they failed to turn over information to attorneys for defendant Timothy Masters in a first-degree murder trial.
Masters was released from prison in 2008 after DNA evidence failed to put him at the scene and pointed to other suspects. Larimer County and the city of Fort Collins agreed to pay him a combined $10 million to settle lawsuits claiming his civil rights were violated.
The lead Fort Collins police detective in the case, James Broderick, faces criminal charges of perjury.
Colorado judges are appointed by the governor and initially stand for retention after serving two years. County court judges then stand for retention every four years, and district court judges every six years.
Fort Collins attorney Mac Hester, who served as vice chairman of the commission, said the panel could not find how the censures of Blair and Gilmore would affect their roles as judges.
“Simply saying they did something wrong while an attorney 10 years ago was not really relevant if there was no input about how the wrongdoing affects their current term,” Hester said.
A group campaigning against the retention of Blair and Gilmore panned the panel’s recommendation, saying it did not account for a dissenting opinion.
“The whole process is flawed,” said Sandy Lemberg of Judicial Justice of Larimer County.
Judicial panels recommending against retention are rare, with only 16 such occurrences in the past 20 years, according to the Office of Judicial Performance Evaluation. Nine judges were retained by voters despite the panel’s “do not retain” recommendation.
———
Information from: Fort Collins Coloradoan,
