The number of felony trials conducted by the Boulder District Attorney’s Office has nearly tripled in the last decade.
The DA’s office conducted 14 felony trials in 2004, and the number has increased since then, hitting a high of 47 in 2013 before dipping to 42 last year.
“This office files about 1,800 felonies a year and has since Broomfield left Boulder County in 2001,” Boulder County District Attorney Stan Garnett said.
“When I first took over in 2009, the average yearly felony jury trial numbers for the previous five years was about 15 a year and in the 1990s was around 10,” Garnett said.
Garnett expects to conduct about 60 felony trials this year.
Trials allow attorneys to become better prosecutors, Garnett said, adding that police officers also benefit from the process because they have to undergo cross-examination.
Garnett said his office gains a better sense of what the community thinks the office’s priorities should be, and media coverage of trials leads to calls from community members and helps the office determine priorities.
“I developed my marijuana policy almost completely off reaction to those jury trials,” he said. “I’ve focused on white-collar crime more for the same reason.”
About 95 percent of the cases are resolved by plea bargains.
“The system would crumble if everyone wanted a trial,” said Eric Zale of the Boulder Public Defenders Office. “Even if there were 40 cases that went to trial in Boulder, imagine the hundreds and hundreds of cases that people plea-bargained.”
