Judge Justin Haenlein plans to resign his post in the Eastern Plains’ 13th Judicial District, which includes Kit Carson, Logan, Morgan, Phillips, Sedgwick, Washington and Yuma counties, as part of a pending agreement with the Independent Judicial Discipline Adjudicative Board.

This is the first case under a new state disciplinary system created by Amendment H, approved by voters in November in the wake of a judicial scandal that raised concerns about how judges are disciplined.

The amendment created an responsible for suspending, disciplining or removing judges accused of misconduct, a job that previously fell to the Colorado Supreme Court.

Haenlein is accused of violating four rules of related to following the law, creating an appearance of impropriety, failing to recuse himself and engaging in improper practice of law, according to the complaint filed in Weld County District Court on Tuesday.

The case was filed in Weld County because one of the three members of the panel reviewing the case is a Weld County district court judge.

Haenlein struck up a friendship with a woman – identified in court records as Jane Doe – whom he represented in four cases between 2013 and 2015 when he was a criminal defense attorney, special counsel Jeffrey Walsh wrote in the filing.

The pair began exchanging sexual and flirtatious texts in 2016 and continued until at least 2022. Haenlein represented her pro bono in a custody case with her ex-husband before recusing himself when he was , but he continued to exchange explicit messages and give her money for rent and other expenses.

Haenlein is also accused of using the state’s judicial case management system to give the woman legal advice in violation of a

Messages sent in the spring of 2022 showed Haenlein offered the woman legal advice between explicit messages, according to the complaint. The woman asked Haenlein for $150 to help with rent, sent him a nude photo and then reminded him to send her the money.

In July 2022, the woman appeared in Haenlein’s courtroom on a felony drug case. He told attorneys in the case he had previously acted as her attorney but didn’t disclose their ongoing intimate relationship, the complaint states.

Haenlein presided over her criminal case for the next two years, during which he granted eight requests for more time so the woman could file paperwork to show she was eligible for a public defender. The judge also accepted a misdemeanor plea agreement and set bond when the woman violated the terms of her probation.

Three months later, in October 2022, the woman texted Haenlein that her boyfriend would soon appear in his courtroom on two felony charges and asked him to release the man from jail on a

The man, identified as John Doe, was charged with methamphetamine possession with intent to distribute and an assault out of Kansas, according to the complaint.

Judges who previously heard the man’s case rejected requests for a personal recognizance bond, but Haenlein granted it over objections from the district attorney – and again did not disclose that he knew a potential witness in the case, Jane Doe.

“…Given the nature of Mr. Doe’s prior criminal history, which included a felony drug conviction, it was objectively inappropriate to grant him a personal recognizance bond in either of the above cases under the circumstances described,” special counsel Jeffrey Walsh wrote in the complaint.

Haenlein has been on paid suspension since November.

During a Friday hearing with a panel from the Independent Judicial Discipline Adjudicative Board, an attorney for Haenlein said the judge plans to resign as part of a stipulation agreement with the state. No agreement was posted online as of Wednesday night and Haenlein’s attorney did not respond to a request for comment.

Denver Post reporter Sam Tabachnik contributed to this report.

Márquez took the helm of the Supreme Court from Justice Brian Boatright as part of a new system in which the chief justice role will rotate among the justices every three years.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: How are you feeling as you take on the chief justice role?��

One of the beauties of taking over at this time is that we’ve had this formal onboarding process that has gone on for the last year. I’m super grateful for that opportunity because it’s given me a chance to shadow the chief, to sit in on a lot of meetings, to undergo a series of HR trainings, management trainings, get to know key constituencies across the state. It’s left me probably better prepared than any chief in recent history.

That’s one of the many major shifts that we’ve made in the last handful of years. So I feel lucky. Obviously, there’s a difference between riding in the front passenger seat and taking over the wheel. I’m now taking over the wheel, but I have looked out the front windshield. I know generally the layout of the vehicle and what the controls do. But steering from here will be its own interesting ride.

Q: What are your thoughts on being the first Latina, first openly gay person to take on this role?��

I have been out for 30-plus years, but I also want to be clear that I do not claim to be the first openly LGBT justice, and I never have done that. I think others have ascribed that to me, but I have never claimed that. I leave it to other people to tell their stories. That’s just being a respectful member of the LGBT community.

Over the last almost 14 years, I have been invited by so many community groups to come share my journey and my story. That’s kind of what happens when you’re the young, gay, Catholic Latina from the Western Slope. All the groups want to hear you speak. And I have been reminded over and over again in those face-to-face encounters just how meaningful my appointment has been to so many of those communities, just to have someone who represents some piece of them in this role.

And that’s been a very powerful reminder to me of two things. One: I stand on others’ shoulders. I sure didn’t get here by myself. Many other people paved the way.

And second, I am reminded that I carry a lot of hopes and dreams of others. And so it’s an added responsibility, which I feel the weight of every day. And the third thing is, at the same time, as a justice, my job is to be neutral and impartial. I don’t represent specific constituencies. I come with that life experience, and that adds a lens to our conversations, but all six of my colleagues bring their life experience as well, and it’s that collective life experience that results in wiser decisions.

Q: The last few years for the Colorado Judicial Department have been rough, between the blackmail allegations, the public censure of former Chief Justice Nathan Coats and allegations of harassment and mistreatment of women in the branch. What lessons were learned?��

I’m very proud of Justice Boatright’s leadership through all of that, because it has been rough waters, no question.

Collectively we have learned a lot. He tasked me with taking the recommendations from those reports and moving forward with trying to improve our workplace culture. That has been a really exciting opportunity, honestly, because it’s a chance to change and do better. It’s a chance to figure out where we had gone wrong and ways we could rebuild stronger and better.

A couple of things have happened in that time frame. We’ve had enormous turnover across the branch at all levels. Something like 40% of our judges have turned over in the last four or five years. And close to 50% of our two core workforce job classes — our court judicial clerks and our probation officer community. A huge swath of our workforce have no connection to those allegations and, frankly, don’t care. They just want to get their jobs done and be well-resourced, supported and moving forward, and that has been my mindset.

We started our workplace culture initiative, we’ve gotten quite a bit done in the first two years. I’m passing the baton, and the leadership of that to Justice (Melissa) Hart as we move forward, but we’ve made a lot of great initial changes. We have developed a mission statement, a vision statement, value statements and are in the process of rolling that out across the branch.

…We started with listening tours around the state. All seven justices split up the state and went out and met face-to-face with employees to hear from them. And it was interesting. I think we were prepared to have really hard conversations about all the allegations. And there were some, but by and large, as I said, because of all of this turnover in the branch, people are much more focused on — what do you call it — keeping the trains running on time. Making sure that they have the resources they need to do their jobs well. The big feedback we got was around compensation. It was around training and well-being. And we used that collective feedback from around the state to develop priorities.

Q: What are you seeing as the challenges coming up for the department?

The external challenges are legion. We’re experiencing positives and negatives with the shift to virtual court. Positives have been greater access to justice. I think we’ve seen many more people able to dial in, avoid getting failure-to-appear warrants, arrests.

So it has been very positive in that regard. The challenges have been some of the technical pieces. We’ve recently had a spate of what would appear to be where disruptors come in and post and run really profane, obscene and often racist comments. Just purely with the intent to disrupt proceedings.

So our IT team and judges are working on ways to navigate that, but I think ultimately it’s going to be we need to have a (different) platform. We are working with a platform that was never designed to be a virtual court system. And so we’ve got to figure out a way — because I think people are excited about providing that service, but we have some kinks to work out.

Q: Many people lost confidence in the justice system around the time of George Floyd’s murder. At the same time in Colorado, the courts were dealing with the blackmail allegations. What would you say to the skeptical Colorado resident who is still reeling from that? Why should they have confidence in the system?��

I have been so impressed in my travels around the state with the dedication and commitment to excellence of all of our employees. We are very mission-oriented group of people and we just continue to show up each day. I recognize that it takes time to earn people’s trust. We have to demonstrate that with steady leadership and policies.

All seven justices are fully on board with this vision. Everyone’s working hard. I’m excited. I’m also very sober about the fact that this will be a challenging road.

Márquez takes the reins from Brian Boatright, who served as chief justice during a tumultuous time for the Colorado Judicial Department as the agency was rocked by allegations of blackmail and mismanagement that ultimately led to the public censure of former Chief Justice Nathan Coats, Boatright’s predecessor.

Márquez, who was sworn in during a private ceremony Friday afternoon, is Colorado’s first Latina chief justice. She was named as Boatright’s successor in 2020, when the Colorado Supreme Court for the first time set term limits for its chief justices.

“I am deeply grateful to Chief Justice Boatright for his leadership,” Márquez said in a statement. “He has overseen significant changes to the administration of the branch in recent years, and his humble leadership has been a model for all of us. As he now hands me the baton, I am ready to carry forward the momentum his leadership has created. Our highest mission remains serving the people of Colorado and upholding the integrity of the judicial system.”

Boatright served as chief for three-and-a-half years. While in the past chief justices could stay in the role as long as they wanted, the chief justice position now rotates on a set schedule of multi-year terms. Márquez’s successor has not yet been named.

“Having worked closely with Justice Márquez for nearly 13 years, I can unequivocally say that the Department is in good hands,” Boatright wrote in an email to judicial employees Friday. “She is kind, thoughtful and brilliant. Most importantly, she cares deeply about the well-being of everyone in the branch.”

An investigation into the blackmail scandal — in which the leadership of the Colorado Judicial Department was accused of giving a lucrative contract to a former employee in order to keep her from making allegations of misconduct public — found Coats was out-of-touch, easily manipulated and ill-equipped to manage a branch of government.

The judicial department has since taken steps to better support the chief justice, particularly in administrative matters.

Márquez joined the Colorado Supreme Court in 2010 after working as a prosecutor in the Colorado Attorney General’s Office.

She and became the first Latina and openly gay justice to sit on the state’s high court.

The censure of Coats, who retired in 2020, is largely ceremonial, carrying no penalty. The ��posted Monday morning on the Colorado Supreme Court website declares, “The Special Tribunal hereby publicly censures you, former Chief Justice Nathan B. Coats, for violating Colorado Code of Judicial Conduct Canon Rule.”

The public discipline was based on an agreement reached earlier this year between Coats and the Colorado Commission on Judicial Discipline. Coats admitted he failed to perform judicial and administrative duties “competently and diligently” as required.

It����ap the first time a Colorado Supreme Court justice has been censured. All of the current high court justices recused themselves from this case, directing a special tribunal made of Colorado Court of Appeals judges to handle the matter.

Those judges concluded in their decision that Coats “undermined the public’s confidence in the integrity of the judiciary,” the censure opinion said.

It marks the latest step in a mop-up of misdeeds that have shaken Colorado’s high court at a time when nationwide public confidence in the judicial branch of government has eroded following unpopular U.S. Supreme Court decisions and revelations of questionable judicial conduct.

In addition to his judicial duties reviewing legal decisions on the Colorado Supreme Court, Coats as chief justice also was the executive head of the judicial system responsible for court administration — for which he may not have received sufficient training, the reviewing judges determined.

Coats served on the Supreme Court for two decades and as chief justice from 2018 until 2020.

During his time as chief justice, the state judicial branch issued a $2.75 million contract to Mindy Masias, who had served as chief of staff in the Colorado Judicial Department. She was facing dismissal for alleged financial irregularities. She took a leave.

Another state judicial branch employee leaked information about the awarding of the contract, which would have funded judicial training activities. The employee alleged the contract was given to Masias to prevent her from revealing high court judges’ misconduct. The contract was issued following Masias’ resignation from her judicial department position and was later canceled.

An investigation last year concluded that, while the issuance of the contract involved unethical behavior, misconduct and lies, the contract wasn’t specifically designed to silence Masias. Outside investigators found evidence of a toxic work environment where top state judicial officials pursued the contract.

They determined that Coats as an administrator was out of touch and easily manipulated, not equipped to manage the state judicial department.

On Monday, Coats, through his attorney John Gleason, declined to comment.

The Colorado Commission on Judicial Discipline appointed Denver-based attorney Qusair Mohamedbhai to represent the people of Colorado and conduct a lengthy investigation into what happened. Mohamedbhai on Monday lauded Coats for his cooperation through that investigation.

“We have a system where judicial ethics apply to all judges and also our justices of the Colorado Supreme Court. We have a system where the people of Colorado in the 1960s ensured that all branches of government would be accountable to the people and where no branch of government will exist above public scrutiny,” Mohamedbhai said.

“Our federal system could definitely learn from the fact that all the rules should apply to everyone equally. Unfortunately, we have a U.S. Supreme Court that says ‘the rules apply to them and not to me.’ At least, in Colorado, that’s not the case.”

Colorado Judicial Department officials declined to comment on the censure.

Since 2019, court officials have made changes in their contracting process, procurement rules and leave-approval systems, department spokesman Jon Sarché said. Supreme Court justices now function like “a board of advisors” on administrative matters, he said.

“This helps the chief justice receive additional perspectives and eases some of the administrative burdens on the chief while keeping the full court much more aware of the department����ap administrative work,” Sarché said.

Investigators in 2022 made recommendations and court officials say they are working to clarify the state judicial mission and values, improve their workplace complaint process, enhance anti-harassment and anti-discrimination training for employees and judges, and update their employee code of conduct and reporting systems.

Court administrators also have clarified obligations to report allegations of judicial misconduct and updated rules, Sarché said, “to more clearly prohibit retaliation and harassment by judges.”

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Both women, Danielle Stecco and Tracy Blea, were laid off in 2020 during a restructuring of the State Court Administrator’s Office. Employees were told they would have the opportunity to re-apply for positions and given priority, but the court administrators did not re-hire Stecco or Blea and instead hired less-qualified men.

The courts also allowed a man who had been placed on administrative leave for inappropriate behavior to keep his job while Blea and Stecco — the most senior employees in the Information Technology Systems Division — lost theirs. Neither woman had any recent disciplinary history, the lawsuit states.

“Plaintiffs both applied for other positions to continue working in (State Court Administrator’s Office), but did not even receive an interview, despite being qualified for these open jobs and having significantly greater seniority than the people who were eventually hired,” the lawsuit states.

The lawsuit filed in Denver District Court is the latest addition to a mounting series of allegations of sexism and sexual harassment in the state court administration.

An independent investigation into the department in 2022 found no “systemic problem of harassment,” though 21% of employees who answered a survey reported they had witnessed gender-based discrimination, sexual harassment or retaliation while on the job and another 17% said they’d experienced such mistreatment.

The investigation also found employees feared retaliation for reporting misconduct. Female employees generally had a less positive experience working for the department than men, the investigation found. Female judicial employees who spoke to The Denver Post said male managers favored women based on their looks or how they dressed, men were held to a lower standard than women, and women in leadership perpetuated harmful or sexist attitudes.

Stecco and Blea experienced discrimination during their more than 20 years working for the state courts, their lawsuit states.

“Throughout their careers with (State Court Administrator’s Office), plaintiffs were regularly discriminated against, and subjected to a toxic and hostile work environment, because of their gender,” the lawsuit states.

Male managers “regularly baselessly called Ms. Stecco ‘hysterical’ and ‘dramatic,’ while praising men who were similarly assertive. SCAO managers regularly refused to take Ms. Stecco’s opinions seriously, while adopting male employees’ ideas,” the lawsuit alleges.

A spokesman for the courts on Friday declined to comment on the lawsuit because the department does not comment on pending litigation.

During the 2020 layoffs, more women were laid off than men, the lawsuit states. The percentage of women working in the two departments affected by layoffs decreased from 44% to 32%, according to the lawsuit.

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The Colorado Commission on Judicial Discipline authorized formal disciplinary proceedings against judges in five cases in the last 18 months, which the agency says is more such proceedings than in the last 12 years combined — showing an uptick in serious, credible complaints against the state’s judges.

The surge came as the Colorado Commission on Judicial Discipline underwent an unprecedented reform effort that wrapped up in the legislature this week and is now headed to Colorado voters, who will in 2024 decide whether to amend the state’s constitution to make the discipline process more transparent.

The Commission on Judicial Discipline received 249 requests for evaluation — complaints — about judges’ behavior in 2022, up from 200 received in 2021 and 199 in 2020, according to the annual report. Nearly all of those complaints — 94% — were dismissed without investigation because the complaints did not fall under the commission’s jurisdiction, were frivolous or did not allege actual misconduct.

That’s consistent with past years. The commission is not able to consider complaints about judges’ legal rulings and only considers allegations about violations of the professional code of conduct, like allegations of rude or racist behavior, sexual harassment or unduly slow rulings.

Chris Forsyth, executive director of the Judicial Integrity Project, which has long advocated for reforms to the discipline system, said Thursday that the high dismissal rate shows the system still isn’t working.

“The same old, same old,” he said. “…I can tell you that a lot of people, attorneys, have given up on filing discipline complaints because they knew nothing would be done. It����ap a waste of time and it would just make the judge mad. And that really hasn’t changed; they’re still dismissing most of the complaints.”

Just 14 complaints made it past the initial screen-out in 2022, according to the annual report. After additional investigation, the commission dismissed 11 because there wasn’t strong enough evidence of wrongdoing. In the remaining three cases, two were dropped with the commission issuing “expression(s) of concern” to the judges, and in one case a judge was privately disciplined. In an additional case that started in 2021 and carried over into 2022, a single judge was publicly disciplined.

The judges who were privately disciplined or issued expressions of concern were not named in the annual report.

The judge��who was privately disciplined was reprimanded for failing to rule on a straightforward motion for a year and four months, according to the report. The judge, who had been previously privately reprimanded by the commission for a similar delay, retired while the disciplinary case was ongoing, according to the report.

The two “expression of concern” dismissals involved one judge who hadn’t promptly registered to vote in the county where the judge lived, as well as a judge who unintentionally carried out a meandering personal conversation while the courtroom’s recording equipment was still active and taking down every word for the formal court record.

The commission oversees discipline investigations for about 330 judges across the state. In 2022, the commission received complaints about judges in every judicial district in the state, with the most complaints about judges in the 18th and Fourth judicial districts, which cover Arapahoe, Douglas, El Paso, Teller, Elbert and Lincoln counties. About 40% of all complaints received by the commission came from those large jurisdictions, according to the report.

The commission’s executive director, Chris Gregory, declined to comment on the report. In legislative hearings, commission members have suggested the spike in complaints is tied to more public awareness about the commission and its function, rather than a sudden increase in judicial misconduct.

Forsyth suggested the commission is receiving similar allegations to those received in the past, but has started to take more public disciplinary action on those complaints as a result of the reform effort and public outcry.

“They’re trying to claim they are doing more now and getting more serious cases now, so public pressure appears to be working,” Forsyth said. “But I don’t really buy they’re getting more serious cases now; they’re just being a little bit more active since they’re in the public eye.”

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The censure request is based on an agreement the Colorado Commission on Judicial Discipline reached with Coats, in which the retired justice admitted he failed to “perform judicial and administrative duties competently and diligently,” the .

While such a censure carries no penalty, it would mark the first time a Colorado Supreme Court justice has ever faced this type of discipline. Coats retired in 2020.

The entire Colorado Supreme Court recused itself from the case, directing a special tribunal comprised of judges from the Colorado Court of Appeals to review the matter.

“The Special Tribunal will review the parties’ stipulation to affirm or deny the Commission’s recommendation,” the statement said, adding that the timing of its decision will be determined in the coming days.

The commission, through its appointed special counsel, Omeed M. Azmoudeh and Qusair Mohamedbhai, called the endeavor a “difficult and unprecedented assignment.”

An attorney for Coats said the former justice does not wish to comment on the agreement.

The push to censure Coats stems from a $2.75 million contract awarded to Mindy Masias, the then-chief of staff to the Colorado Judicial Department. The state court administrator at the time, Chris Ryan, told The Denver Post in 2021 that the contract was awarded in order to keep her from speaking out about judges’ misconduct.

An independent investigation last year found that while the contract was steeped in unethical behavior, misconduct and lies, it wasn’t specifically designed to prevent Masias from divulging damaging information.

The probe, though, found these top judicial officials leveraged a toxic work environment as they “brazenly pursued” the lucrative contract. It painted Coats as out-of-touch, easily manipulated and ill-equipped to manage a branch of government.

In the stipulation released Thursday, Coats admitted that by allowing the judicial department to contract with the Masias after she had resigned in lieu of termination, the chief justice “undermined the public’s confidence in the integrity of the judiciary and failed to exercise diligence in the performance of his administrative duties.”

All told, Coats allowed a potential multimillion-dollar contract to be awarded to an employee despite numerous warning signs, the agreement stated. It was particularly concerning, the commission noted, that the chief justice was separately contacted by the Colorado attorney general and the state auditor, advising him to investigate an anonymous letter that outlined numerous allegations — including against Masias.

Coats, though, did not alert those offices that his department was considering giving Masias a contract.

Ryan told lawmakers in August that the investigation into his claims was flawed, calling for widespread reform to Colorado judicial discipline process.

An investigation by the state auditor last year found evidence of occupational fraud, apparently illegal transactions and the misuse of public funds inside the Judicial Branch. It reported four former employees — including Masias, Ryan, former human resources director Eric Brown and an unnamed employee — to law enforcement for additional criminal investigation.

The Denver district attorney elected not to pursue charges, saying prosecutors did not have enough time after receiving the auditor’s referral.

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Lance P. Timbreza resigned his position as a judge in September after he was suspended with pay in June while the disciplinary investigation was ongoing. His inappropriate behavior occurred during the conference in June 2022, according to the public censure.

Timbreza was drinking alcohol with several other conference attendees and made sexual advances toward a young attorney, according to the censure. The attorney did not welcome the attention, which included the judge showing him a pornographic image and kissing him.

The attorney, identified only as “Attorney 1” in the censure, appeared uncomfortable with Timbreza’s advances, witnesses said. The man did not explicitly tell Timbreza to stop, and Timbreza, who was visibly intoxicated, believed his advances were welcome. The censure notes that the attorney was “younger and less experienced” than the judge, and “made best efforts to politely decline” the judge’s overtures “instead of forcefully rejecting them.”

The two men ended up in the attorney’s hotel room, according to the censure.

“What happened next is unclear,” the censure reads. “Attorney 1 has been emotional when discussing this case and has been unwilling or unable to disclose what happened in the hotel room. (Former) Judge Timbreza claims that he laid in bed with Attorney 1 and fell asleep for approximately four hours before leaving early the next morning.”

In addition to the public reprimand, Timbreza was also ordered to pay the state just over $20,000 in attorney fees. The ex-judge was previously disciplined in 2019 after he was arrested for drunk driving. He was appointed to the bench in 2016 by Gov. John Hickenlooper.

Timbreza’s attorney, Nancy Cohen, declined to comment on the censure Tuesday and Timbreza did not immediately return a request for comment.

The judge’s public censure is the first time a Colorado judge has been disciplined through a new process created by the Colorado Supreme Court earlier this year.

Amid an ongoing reform effort led by lawmakers, the Colorado Supreme Court on its own implemented voluntary changes to the judicial discipline process in January. The new rules allow for a special tribunal of Colorado Court of Appeals judges to handle any complaints of professional misconduct against a Supreme Court justice, or against any judge when the justices recuse themselves from the disciplinary proceedings.

All of the state Supreme Court justices recused themselves from Timbreza’s discipline case, and a special tribunal was convened for the first time.

The justices did not specify why they recused themselves from the case. The new discipline rules offer a variety of circumstances in which the Supreme Court would recuse, including: when a justice makes a complaint against someone else or is a witness in a disciplinary proceeding, when a justice’s family or staff member is involved, or when two or more justices have recused themselves from a case.

Disciplinary records show a tribunal of seven Court of Appeals judges authored the censure against Timbreza.

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El Paso County District Court Judge David Prince was reprimanded not because of actual wrongdoing but because he is a member of the Commission on Judicial Discipline, the group responsible for disciplining the state’s judges, Prince’s attorney David Kaplan claimed in a letter last week.

But Attorney Regulation Counsel Jessica Yates, who sent the critical letter to Prince, said she was simply acting on her professional responsibilities.

“Despite all my privilege and all my ability to fight… when I received that letter, my wife is in tears for a couple of nights, my blood pressure hit a 15-year high,” Prince told the House Judiciary Committee in a hearing at the state Capitol on Wednesday. “…I feared for my career. I effectively have to give up what were my plans for retirement because of the way things have gone because we came forward and testified. And it wasn’t just me, it was every lawyer on the commission (received the letter).”

The dispute is the latest turn in a simmering fight between the Colorado Commission on Judicial Discipline and the Colorado Supreme Court amid an effort by lawmakers to reform the state’s system for disciplining judges in the wake of a blackmail scandal that came to light in 2021. Prince made his public comments during a discussion of three judicial reform bills, each of which passed unanimously out of the committee Wednesday.

In February, Prince, who is vice chair of the Commission on Judicial Discipline, testified to lawmakers about the commission’s working relationship with the Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel. Yates took issue with Prince’s testimony and on Feb. 6 sent a letter to Prince and the other members of the commission in which she accused Prince of making false statements, and said he and the commission’s members may have violated the rules of professional conduct for attorneys.

The Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel, which Yates leads, is responsible for investigating any such professional conduct violations, which can result in an attorney being disciplined, suspended or disbarred.

In the Feb. 6 letter, Yates said she was not pursuing a formal investigation against Prince but was instead reaching out, one attorney to another, to encourage Prince to “better conform future conduct” to the rules of professional behavior.

But Kaplan wrote in a March 8 response to Yates that her admonishment, which was delivered on official letterhead, was “intimidating,” would have a “terrible chilling effect” on future testimony from attorneys, and might violate a state law that prohibits retaliation against people who testify at the capitol.

Prince did not return a request for comment Thursday and Kaplan declined to comment.

Yates accused Prince of making false statements about the Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel’s level of cooperation with the Commission on Judicial Discipline when he described problems the commission members were having with the agency. Kaplan maintains Prince’s comments were true.

Yates, who also sent a March 9 letter to lawmakers outlining her concerns with Prince’s testimony, said in an interview Thursday that she did not intend the letters as intimidation. Kaplan’s concerns were “overblown,” she said.

“I really had been operating on the good faith belief that we all share a common goal of providing accurate information to the legislature,” Yates said. “They interpreted it differently. If they feel intimidated, then I regret that consequence. But I hope that we can all continue to have that shared common goal of providing accurate information to the legislature.”

She acknowledged that a letter from her, as head of the Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel, or OARC, holds more weight than a letter from a private attorney, but said she made it clear the letter was not an official action by the office.

“OARC was never working on it,” she said. “There was no pending matter in our office. So for my purposes, the matter is closed.”

As attorney regulation counsel, Yates serves at the pleasure of the Colorado Supreme Court justices — she was hired by them and could be fired by them — but the office operates independently from the Supreme Court and the judicial department, she said. The justices did not instruct her to send the letter and she did not seek their permission to do so, she said.

“I did it completely on my own volition,” she said. “We are an independent office. I don’t take direction from the Supreme Court or the State Court Administrator’s Office.”

Jon Sarché, spokesman for the Colorado Judicial Department, reiterated that in a statement Thursday.

“The Supreme Court is not involved in the decision-making of attorney regulation counsel in individual cases, was not involved in the matters or discussions referenced in the letter, and was not involved in the decision to send the letter,” he said.

During Wednesday’s committee testimony, Prince discussed the stress he and other commission members have been under as they’ve at times been pitted against the Colorado Supreme Court and the Colorado Judicial Department during the reform process.

“We know it����ap an incredibly important task and an incredibly difficult one, because you are dealing with holding accountable the most powerful people and privileged people in our society: judges,” he said. “You know it����ap going to be difficult when you go in, but you have no idea that you’re going to be under this constant onslaught that we have been under the past two years.”

He tied the admonishment against him to the felony criminal charge brought against now-former state Sen. Pete Lee, D-Colorado Springs, who had been leading the judicial reform effort when he was indicted on a felony charge because of false information the Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel gave the Fourth Judicial District Attorney’s Office. Lee, who was term-limited, resigned from the reform committee, and the charge against him was later dropped.

Lee declined to discuss the dropped case against him Thursday but said the letter Prince received appears to “have the effect of intimidating him from expressing his beliefs.”

“Prince may view it as intimidation, I may view it as intimidation, in fact, any lawyer is going to have to think twice before going to a House or Senate committee for fear of being charged with a violation of the code of professional conduct,” Lee said Thursday.

Prince told lawmakers Wednesday that he’s received support from judges and attorneys for judicial reform, but that many people appear hesitant to voice their support publicly for fear of professional retaliation.

“People come up to me, people say, ‘Thank you for what you are doing,'” he said. “What shocks me is the number of people who do that who are judges. At the judicial conference, I couldn’t go anywhere… without judges coming up and saying that. But it was always in a quiet hallway, near a dark corner, in a whispered voice.”

Updated 5:30 p.m. March 17, 2023 This story has been updated to correct the characterization of what Attorney Regulation Counsel Jessica Yates accused El Paso County District Court Judge David Prince of in a letter she wrote to the judge and other members of the Colorado Commission on Judicial Discipline. She accused Prince of making false statements.

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The Commission on Judicial Discipline in the last year advanced four formal complaints against the state’s judges that the panel found to have merit — as many formal complaints as had been filed in the past 12 years, vice-chair David Prince told lawmakers Wednesday.

“The judicial ethics oversight system in Colorado has not been working,” Prince, who is a district court judge, said during a legislative hearing Wednesday.

The spike came amid a high-profile scandal involving top judicial officials and a subsequent lawmaker-led effort to reform the system for disciplining the state’s judges, which has operated in near-total secrecy for years. Prince suggested the publicity around the scandal may have prompted more Colorado residents to lodge complaints against judges.

“We have seen more serious allegations,” he said. “…I suspect it’s more reporting. I have no reason to think judges are misbehaving at a higher level than in the past.”

The commission also saw a 25% increase in the overall number of complaints it received in 2022 compared to 2021, Prince said. Historically, the commission has dismissed about 90% of the complaints it receives about judges on the grounds that the complaints do not fall within the commission’s purview, and only investigates about 10% of the allegations it receives.

Of that 10%, even fewer cases are referred for formal, public discipline. In the last 20 years, the commission has received 3,924 complaints and investigated 373 complaints. Since the commission’s start in the 1960s, it has issued 250 corrective actions — that is, private or public discipline, according to the commission.

But public discipline has been rare. Only about a half-dozen judges have been publicly disciplined in Colorado since 2010, and most of those occurred in the last couple years.

Judges who faced public discipline in the last decade include John Scipione, who failed to disclose an extramarital affair with a clerk, Mark Thompson, who threatened his stepson with an AR-15-style rifle, Natalie Chase, who used a racial slur in conversation with a Black colleague, Laurie Booras, who called another judge “the little Mexican,” Robert Rand, who made misogynistic and inappropriate comments, Lance Timbreza, who was charged with driving under the influence, and Ryan Kamada, who tipped a friend off to a federal drug investigation.

There are about 340 judges currently on the bench in the state.

Corrected 9:36 a.m. Feb. 5, 2023:��This story was corrected to reflect that the commission has issued 250 corrective actions since its start, not in the last 20 years.��