Judges across the state are not uniformly following the new regulations, which former Chief Justice Nathan Coats last year said were designed to keep cases from “disappearing into a dark hole.” Criminal court records filed since the rule took effect in May show spotty and at times lackluster compliance, the Post����ap review found.

The rule change followed advocacy by open records proponents and a 2018 Denver Post report that concluded judges suppressed thousands of court cases for years without public explanation. Since May, judges in Colorado criminal cases have been required to issue public, written orders whenever they hide criminal cases or court records from public view. The judges must explain why they are making the records secret and say how long the suppression will last.

Five cases were fully hidden in Colorado since May; none of those complied with the new requirements, according to data and court records provided by the Colorado Judicial Department. Three cases had no public orders on the suppression, and two had orders that did not meet the new standard.

In another eight cases, judges issued written orders about the suppression of particular documents, rather than entire case files. Of 24 orders limiting public access identified by the Post in those cases, 20 appeared to comply with the new rule and four did not.

But that data, gathered from cases where the formal suppression process was already under way, doesn’t reveal instances in which the right procedures were completely ignored — a problem that has cropped up in several high-profile court cases this year.

“When the Supreme Court adopted and implemented this rule change, it was not a suggested rule,” said Rob McCallum, spokesman for the Colorado Judicial Department. “It is a rule to be followed by the judges, and is to be interpreted by the judges appropriate to the filings in their cases.”

When former Fifth Judicial District Chief Judge Mark Thompson was charged in Summit County with menacing someone with an AR-15-style rifle in October, Judge Paul Dunkelman granted a request for secrecy in a one-line order that did not follow the amended rule.

In July, 20th Judicial District Chief Judge Ingrid Bakke initially granted a request that a video in the Boulder King Soopers mass shooting case be kept from the public with a similar one-line order that did not follow the rule.

In Chaffee County, a large number of documents in the case of Barry Morphew, who is accused of killing his wife, were filed by attorneys as suppressed until the Post asked for the judge’s written order justifying the suppression, after which Chief Judge Patrick Murphy ordered the documents be made public.

“The court believes that the parties were under the misconception that the court had ordered that pleadings in the case needed to be filed as suppressed,” a minute order read. “The court did not issue such an order.”

Some court records in Colorado are always considered private, including personal financial information or pre-sentence reports, and attorneys can file those records as private without a judge’s order, McCallum said. But if a record is not denoted as private by court rules, state laws or other regulations, then attorneys must ask judges to make the records secret and go through the new process, McCallum said.

“If we have a party who wants to file everything under suppression, they are going to have to follow this rule every single time,” he said.

When limiting public access to court records, judges’ written orders must specifically identify the “substantial interests” served by making the records secret, and must find there is no less drastic way to protect those interests, like by partially redacting a record instead of fully blocking it from the public’s view, according to the new rule.

In orders reviewed by the Post, what judges identified as those interests varied significantly. In a Weld County case, Judge Allison Esser wrote that she was blocking public access to some court records in order to protect “privileged and otherwise private and confidential information regarding (the defendant����ap) mental health.”

In other cases, judges cited only general topics, such as “privacy and security issues” or “risks to the defendant����ap security and safety,” as the reasons for the secrecy, records showed.

Those vague explanations don’t align with the intent of the new rule, said Jeff Roberts, executive director of the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition.

“The rule is intended to be more specific than just saying, ‘privacy,’ ” he said. “…The point of the rule is to give the public some idea of why a court record needs to be closed, at least for a particular time period, and that doesn’t tell the public much of anything.”

The vague explanations also make it difficult to know whether the information being kept secret is actually private information, said attorney Steve Zansberg, president of the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition. Privacy is a constitutional right, and the law recognizes that some records, like a person’s HIV status, psychological records and medical records, shouldn’t be public, he said.

“But not everything is private,” Zanzberg said. “It has to meet the standard of what is really private. I can explain why something is highly personal, private and intimate without disclosing that information. And that����ap what judges are expected to do.”

The new rule also requires judges to set the duration for which records will be kept secret. Some of the judges’ orders reviewed by the Post closed the records to the public until the end of the defendants’ cases. Several orders issued by 18th Judicial District Court Judge Darren Vahle in Arapahoe County prohibited public access to some court records for 10 years in order to protect the “privacy” of various people.

Zansberg took issue with that decade-long duration. The rule says judges must “indicate a date or event certain” by which the order will expire, but it doesn’t set an explicit limit on how long secrecy can last.

“So — I’m going to declare this order is only going to remain in effect for 500 years,” Zansberg said. “Would that be in compliance with this? No. And I frankly don’t think that 10 years is either.”

Still, some explanation is better than none, he added.

“After years and years of going back again and again to the judicial branch, we got this rule in place,” he said. “And is it perfect? No. Is it a lot better than things were? Yes.”

McCallum said the state’s chief judges were briefed on the new procedures, and the chief judges were then responsible for communicating the changes to the judges in their judicial districts. He declined to discuss whether particular orders meet the requirements of the rule.

“That is not for me to interpret,” he said.

Bill Campbell, executive director of the Colorado Commission on Judicial Discipline, said the commission hasn’t received any complaints about judges not following the new rule. He added that such complaints would likely be handled through the courts, rather than falling under the commission’s purview.

“The only way it would fall into our lap would be if the judge was really rude or something in the courtroom, out of line,” he said. “Making a mistake, essentially, about when to unlock a file would normally not fall into our lap.”

McCallum said judges’ orders can be challenged in court if they do not comply with the rule, and Zansberg said he expects to see such challenges.

“Eventually in egregious cases, they may get litigated and challenged,” he said. “But for now, we have this brand new rule. Previously they didn’t have to say a word, and now they do.”

The rules, proposed by a statewide committee of attorneys and judges who made recommendations after months of meeting behind closed doors, are to take effect sometime in 2021, according to Chief Justice Nathan Coats who disclosed the approval at a meeting of the legislature’s Joint Budget Committee.

Coats said the change is intended to solve the problem of cases being sealed and then “disappearing into a dark hole.”

The rules are the result of a Denver Post investigation in 2018 that revealed thousands of criminal cases were suppressed from the public – some for decades and frequently without reason or cause. Many still are.

One such case was the indictment of Kelly Turner, charged in the death of her 7-year-old daughter, Olivia. Five months after Turner was charged with faking the girl’s terminal illness and killing her, a Douglas County district court judge restricted all public access to the murder case file.

Since March 2020, the entire high-profile case had remained suppressed from the public until District Judge Patricia Herron��undid her restriction on Nov. 20 when a Denver Post reporter asked about it. Turner was arraigned Tuesday.

In that time, no one could know what was in any of the 16 court orders Herron issued in the case during – including the order to suppress it – nor access any of the original documents or records that had been public when the case was filed in October 2019, such as why Turner was facing murder and a dozen other charges.

There was no hearing to discuss closing the case and��Herron issued no written order suppressing the case.

change all that.

The rules would have let Herron to hold a hearing to close the case file, to give a specific reason for why she suppressed the case, and to set a timeline for reopening it to the public.

A judge’s order to suppress a case will now be public.

“As things (stood), there (was) no requirement whatsoever for a judge to prepare any findings, written or oral, to justify a denial of access to court records,” said First Amendment lawyer Steve Zansberg, who represents several news media outlets including The Denver Post. “With the adoption of the new rule … a judge is required to issue a written order which explains to the public why (s)he concludes … fairly rigorous standards have been met. To my mind, that is a huge difference.”

In October, the committee of attorneys and judges that evaluates state rules of criminal procedure finished nearly two years of closed-door meetings and discussions regarding suppressing cases and how to do it.

Earlier efforts to improve public access to court records had stalled, but committee members said it was the Post����ap investigation that revived the discussion. Coats, who retires Jan. 22, had requested the committee to review the matter anew.

In a public Zoom hearing on Oct. 13, the committee offered up pages of new rules to the Supreme Court.

Fourth Judicial District Judge Deborah Grohs chaired the 14-member committee and told the justices the problem was obvious.

“There really was no guidance for trial judges for when we should do this, how we should do it, what the restrictions are or any standard,” she said during the hearing. “We were hearing about judges across the state who were suppressing entire files without making any ruling whatsoever, or were keeping court files, particularly high-profile cases, in their chambers so nobody could get access to them.”

Colorado Court of Appeals Judge John Dailey, also a member of the committee, told the justices the committee was surprised to learn the extent of the problem.

“We discovered there are scads of cases out there of which information is being closed off to the public – information about entire case files – for an indefinite period of time, with little or no justification given for closing off these files,” Dailey said.

The rules, however, won’t allow for the public to listen in on a hearing to suppress a case.

“There are certain things that are sensitive to the case and sensitive to safety concerns and fair trial,” Grohs told the justices. “We know the right to access is important, and we understand the First Amendment. There are many other concerns that are equally as important and sometimes it has to weigh in favor of keeping these things private.”

Despite The Post����ap stories, dozens of criminal cases have remained suppressed while they are active, frequently opened to the public only after plea bargains are made and sentences handed down.

Among them were the felony cases against three people tied to the gang-shooting death of Andrew Graham, killed as he walked home from a Centennial light-rail station in November 2009.

The cases were suppressed by Herron in 2017 and remained that way for three years.

With the cases suppressed from the public, all three defendants – Allen Ford, Joseph Martin and Clarissa Lockhart – made plea deals with prosecutors that resulted in first-degree murder charges being dropped against them. Charges against a fourth defendant were dismissed.

Ford pleaded guilty in November 2019 to a racketeering charge and was sentenced in January 2020 to 20 years in prison; Martin had pleaded guilty in 2018 to a pair of felonies tied to Graham’s killing including aggravated robbery and was sentenced to 10 years in prison; Lockhart pleaded guilty in February 2020 to a racketeering charge and was sentenced to 10 years.

The cases were finally unsuppressed in April 2020 by 18th Judicial District Judge Michael Spear, a month after alleged triggerman Terrell Jones, 27, was arrested and charged with Graham’s murder. Jones was 16 at the time of the shooting.

Denver Post reporter Shelly Bradbury contributed to this report.

Correction: Because of a reporter’s error, this story originally said that under the new rules, a district court judge must hold a hearing before suppressing a criminal case from the public. Judges may hold a hearing at their discretion, but are not required to.

At about the same time, a committee of the Colorado Supreme Court is to decide how cases such as Ford’s – suppressed from public view since October 2017 under a judge’s orders, which are also under seal – are to be dealt with and how long they can be kept under wraps.

Still not public is which charge Ford, 28, actually pleaded guilty to back in November as part of a deal and for which he will be facing prison time. His case, along with three other defendants in Graham’s death, remains suppressed from the public. One of them, Joseph Martin, pleaded guilty in February 2018�� to a pair of felony charges related to the killing and was sentenced to a 10-year prison term.

The only way the public can learn of Ford’s case and those of his co-defendants, The Denver Post has found, is by paying for the privilege. The free website run by the Colorado Judicial Branch that allows anyone to look up a pending case does not show any information about suppressed cases – not the name of the defendant, the charges they face, the court in which they must appear, or whether they were even sent to prison.

Clerks at the Arapahoe County courthouse where Ford will appear Friday said they couldn’t confirm his case even existed when a reporter asked when his sentencing hearing was scheduled to occur. There is no public computer for people to search for themselves. Instead, the reporter was referred to the state’s public website, which did not contain any information about the cases.

A third defendant, Clarissa Lockhart, 29, is free on bond and scheduled for trial in March. Like the others, her case is suppressed and any information is unavailable to the public without paying a fee.

A fourth person charged in the case, Kendall Austin, 28, was released in October after three months in the Arapahoe County Jail, when prosecutors said they lacked the evidence to bring him to trial and dropped the charges.

Police have said they believed the triggerman was a juvenile, but he has never been arrested or charged in the case.

Even though there’s been media coverage about the case, the public has no way to see the records for itself. Although courtrooms remain open to the public for a suppressed case, currently there’s no easy method to learn when the next hearing will occur without paying for the information.

That����ap precisely the findings The Post made in 2018 in its Shrouded Justice series, which revealed that thousands of felony cases in Colorado have been kept under wraps, some of them for decades and for violent crimes such as murder.

Little has changed since the stories first appeared, except that some information about suppressed cases can be found on the for-pay websites that purchase the same information from the judicial department.

The Criminal Rules Procedure Committee of the state Supreme Court on Friday is expected to review a new set of rules that lay down parameters for judges and lawyers to suppress criminal cases from the public.

The rule takes on a number of issues The Post uncovered in its investigation – how long a case can remain suppressed; the specific reasons a case can be suppressed; and a review process to open the records to the public – but leaves a gaping hole about whether the judge’s order closing the case file will continue to be hidden from the public.

“Colorado could do a lot more to ensure public access to court records,” said Jeffrey Roberts, executive director of the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition. “We don’t seem close to having a state system like the federal service which would let anyone call up court records on their laptops.”

The supreme court committee is expected to hand up its recommended rule to the full Supreme Court bench, which would make the final decision after a public hearing, Chief Justice Nathan Coats told legislators in December.

The rule should specifically address whether a judge’s suppression order is public, in part so the public can understand how courts are using their authority, Roberts said.

“We’re hopeful the new rule will at least address the suppression issues, to make a more uniform standard of how the public gets access to criminal court records,” Roberts added. “If the point of this is to give the public some information about why court records are not available for them to view, that initial order is what will supply that information. If that����ap not available and there’s nothing for the public to see, then we still have the same problem. It should be explicit, not just implied access.”

Colorado’s open records laws do not apply to the judicial branch. It uses a set of rules approved by the Supreme Court justices that largely reflect the open records laws.

The Colorado Supreme Court����ap 14-member Rules of Criminal Procedure committee on Friday is expected to begin deciding whether to shore up rules dealing with suppressed court cases. But the committee, which includes nine elected officials or representatives, will not allow any member of the public to attend.

Instead, any proposed rule would be published and public input invited, including public testimony before the full Supreme Court at a later date. The justices would then meet in secret to consider the recommendations and input before issuing any final rule.

“That there is an opportunity for public input … is not a complete substitute for the public’s ability to observe the formation of public policy,” said attorney Steven Zansberg, president of the Colorado Freedom of Information Committee.

The committee meetings are in response to a series of Denver Post stories that exposed the practice of suppressing cases from the public, dozens of them criminal cases in which defendants were sentenced to prison terms. Supreme Court Chief Justice Nathan Coats requested the committee take up the issue.

Not every one of the Supreme Court����ap committees – – does its business in secret. For example, the court����ap Public Access Committee, which decides how court records are to be shared with the public, holds its meetings openly.

“Each committee decides if its meetings are open or not, and this committee (Rules of Criminal Procedure) does not, as a rule, hold public meetings,” Judicial Department spokesman Robert McCallum told The Denver Post in an email.

The Colorado Open Meetings Act, as with the Colorado Open Records Act, does not apply to the state’s judiciary.

Padilla is one of thousands of criminal and civil cases The Denver Post last year revealed had been hidden from the public over the past 19 years, nearly all because of judges’ orders to close off access to them through an unrestricted procedure known as suppression.

The court’s Rules of Criminal Procedure committee on March 15 is expected to discuss new rules regarding existing suppressed cases as well as restrictions on��how the process should be used in the future. That is a major change from the court’s previous resistance to making court records more accessible to the public and media.

“The circumstances giving rise to such restrictive orders and the capacity for them to continue in effect in perpetuity, without challenge or even awareness of their existence, remains a concern,” Colorado Chief Justice Nathan Coats wrote in a March 1 memo to committee chairman, Colorado Court of Appeals Judge John Dailey, asking for its help. “An integral piece of the ongoing attempt by the judiciary of this state (is) to facilitate public access to court records as widely and expeditiously as can be managed.”

Padilla’s case was not among The Post����ap initial findings, but came to light as the newspaper delved further into suppressed cases that remain closed to the public today.

Suppressing a case is different than sealing one, where specific rules and laws dictate how the process can be used and for how long. Suppression has no rules, can be applied to any type of case, and can remain in place for years.

To tackle the issues uncovered by The Post, the state supreme court initially charged its Public Access Committee to come up with solutions. There was only one problem: No judge was interested in participating.

“It����ap been decided that the Rules of Criminal Procedure Committee will take it up and act on it quickly,” Judicial Department spokesman Rob McCallum told The Post. “The hope is to have a standard by March or April via a Supreme Court directive.”

In his memo, Coats instructed the committee to help draft rules governing the use of suppression orders in criminal matters. Rules already exist for suppressing civil cases, though The Post’s investigation showed they are rarely followed or applied properly.

Suppressing a case is a tactic, typically by prosecutors in criminal matters, to prevent any information about it from becoming public, ostensibly to protect witnesses or an ongoing investigation. That meant searches of court records on public computers at courthouses never revealed the cases – not the names of the defendants, the charges they faced or the judges presiding over the matter.

Coats also asked the committee to take up the issue of whether the public and news media should be alerted when there’s a potential to suppress access to a case, and whether judges’ orders restricting access, and the reasons behind them, should also be made public.

The 52-year-old Padilla’s case was suppressed long after he was arrested and convicted of first-degree murder, kidnapping and burglary charges in 2002. Padilla in 1999 killed a man who was to be a witness in another criminal case, a conviction he unsuccessfully appealed despite his assertions that key witnesses had recanted their testimony.

Padilla escaped from police custody just after his conviction. After he was recaptured, he was sentenced in March 2003 to life in prison plus an additional 96 years by District Judge Harlan Bockman, who retired in 2008.

All the records in the Padilla case were suppressed in 2014 by former Adams County District Judge John Popovich Jr., courthouse dockets show, for reasons the public is not allowed to see. Popovich’s order and the details behind it are also suppressed.

Popovich retired in 2017.

The former judges did not respond to efforts by The Post to reach them.

Because the case is suppressed, only the current judge assigned to it — it’s unclear who that is — 17th Judicial District Attorney Dave Young’s office and Padilla’s public defenders are allowed to see any of the paperwork that put Padilla behind bars. That includes the police investigation behind the crime and the names of the witnesses who purportedly changed their testimony.

Padilla isn’t listed among the thousands of inmates in Colorado prisons on a state-run website that shows who they are, why they’re there, where they are serving their sentence and for how long.

A spokesman for the Colorado Department of Corrections said they can’t reveal Padilla’s location because he’s been transferred, likely to an out-of-state facility, and department rules prevent them from telling the public where, though no law specifically prevents it.

State law does require the department to tell the family of Padilla’s victim — the victim’s name is concealed in the suppressed case file — and prosecutors where he is being housed, which officials say they have done.

A DOC spokesman told The Post it could not share Padilla’s location – or anything about his incarceration – for “safety and security reasons.”

Since a Denver Post investigation in July revealed that thousands of criminal and civil cases across the state have been suppressed since 2013 — at least 66 of them felonies for which the defendant was charged, convicted and sentenced��— some prosecutors have diligently asked judges to open them to the public.

But a review shows that not all of the criminal cases have been unsuppressed. Not a single civil case cited in The Post’s investigation has been opened. The judges’ orders and the original requests to suppress the cases also remain closed to any public review despite assurances from state officials they were looking to change the process.

In three instances, judges quickly unsuppressed a criminal case after The Post asked why they were still inaccessible months after prosecutors filed a motion for them to be opened. In at least two other cases, prosecutors waited for a judge to act on a motion they said they filed, only to learn — after The Post asked about them — the paperwork never went through.

“Documents that are part of a court����ap records should be closed to the public in only the rarest of cases, and only with substantial justification,” said Mark Silverstein, legal director for ACLU of Colorado. “Here, entire cases — not just specific documents — are closed, and remain closed, in the absence of any justification at all.”

In Arapahoe County, for instance, the 2014 case against Clarence Howard, 27, has been suppressed since the day it was filed. Howard was convicted in March 2016 of more than a dozen felonies including robbery and assault. He was sentenced to more than 45 years in prison and isn’t eligible for parole until 2049.

Yet his case remained suppressed despite prosecutors’ request in May to make it public. The trial judge on the case, District Judge Frederick Martinez, was replaced by District Judge Patricia Herron, who hadn’t acted on prosecutors’ request.

A spokesman for the judicial department last week said heavy caseloads likely caused the backup, noting Herron immediately unsuppressed the case after The Post����ap inquiry.

In Douglas County, Scott Flint pleaded guilty to a felony charge of sexual exploitation of a child related to pornography in October 2017 and was granted a deferred sentence for five years. The case was suppressed. Seven other charges were dismissed as part of a plea deal. That means the conviction will be dropped and the last charge dismissed if he stays out of trouble. But until then, he’s a registered sex offender.

“We did not seek suppression of the court file,” according to Richard Orman, senior chief deputy district attorney for the 18th Judicial District. “Thus it was suppressed by the court on its own.”

Orman said his office in May requested the file to be unsuppressed. It remained that way until Nov. 14 after The Post inquired about it, records show.

District Judge Paul King, whose case it was, retired on July 2. Just after prosecutors made the request, King gave lawyers on both sides 15 days to oppose making Flint����ap case public and neither side objected.

Judicial Department spokesman Jon Sarche said District Judge Theresa Slade took over the case on King’s retirement.

Then there’s the matter of former Adams 14 School Board President Robert Vashaw, 52, who was sentenced in June 2017 to a year in jail — he was released after six months — for trying to lure a 12-year-old girl to have sex with him.

A visiting judge suppressed the case over concerns of releasing information.

Prosecutors said they filed a motion in May to unsuppress the case and have been waiting for a judge to act on it.

A new motion to unsuppress the case was filed immediately. The judge signed it the same day, records show.

“Transparency is a problem”

Suppression is a unique tool in the state’s judicial process, with neither rule nor law dictating how and when it can or should be used.

“Transparency is a problem throughout Colorado’s judicial branch; the system does not encourage transparency,” said Chris Forsyth, executive director of The Judicial Integrity Project, a Denver-based watchdog group. “The fact is judges can hide about anything they want to hide. And that����ap a problem.”

The process is distinct from sealing a criminal case, which is clearly set out in state statute. Defendants have a right to request a case to be sealed forever if they were acquitted or the charges against them were dismissed. Convictions for certain low-level felonies can also be sealed, but only when at least a decade has passed.

When a case is sealed, no one but the judge has access to its information and courthouse employees must say “no such case exists” to any inquiry about it. All parts of the investigation surrounding the case are also sealed, no matter which police agency has them.

Suppression works differently, with judges free to shut the public out from any information in a criminal case for any reason, at any time and for as long as the judge likes. Additionally, the judge’s order to suppress the case and any of the reasoning behind it – as well as the request from prosecutors or defense attorney laying out their rationale to have it suppressed – are also suppressed.

Civil cases are slightly different in that judges must give a length of time a case will stay suppressed, but little else.

The Post found dozens of cases where civil lawsuits over the pettiest of matters — an unpaid student loan, for instance — were suppressed. The newspaper also found that while malpractice lawsuits against doctors are prohibited from being suppressed, similar cases against attorneys are routinely hidden from the public.

Officials with the Colorado Judicial Department have said they were deciding whether to change the rules and, at a minimum, allow for judicial orders and the motions behind them to be publicly available.

Following The Post’s stories, the state immediately fixed the computer system that tracks all court cases statewide. Although the courtrooms were technically open, the dates of hearings and trials were not publicly available and the charges a defendant faced weren’t listed anywhere. The system did not treat sealed cases and suppressed ones differently. That meant suppressed cases did not appear anywhere in the public computer system. It was as if they did not exist.

In at least one case, a judge moved quickly on requests to unsuppress a case, only to keep it suppressed and still not reveal why.

That’s the situation with . Although the public can now see that Greenberg pleaded guilty to felony sexual assault of a child in May 2017 and received a deferred sentence that is set to expire in 2021, the details of his conviction are locked away. He is a registered sex offender in Centennial.

Prosecutors have told The Post they wrongly suppressed Greenberg’s case in 2016 and have been unsuccessful in trying to get it unsuppressed since the newspaper’s investigation.

District Judge Shay Whitaker apparently refused prosecutors’ request to open the case, and Orman won’t say why because the matter remains suppressed.

“I do not believe that I can provide additional information as to how the court ruled on that motion without violating a subsequent order of the court,” Orman said in an email to The Post.

Greenberg’s attorney, Gary Lozow, has not responded to several emails seeking an explanation.

Denver Post investigative reporter David Migoya sits down to talk about the reporting that went into his three-part series “Shrouded Justice,” which examined the practice of suppressing court cases in Colorado. Migoya’s investigation concluded that someone could be arrested, charged, convicted and sentenced for a crime in Colorado without anyone outside of law enforcement ever knowing who, how, why or whether the process was fair.

��

If approved, the standards would apply to any case in which there is a request to keep information hidden from the public, although it����ap unclear whether it would be mandatory or simply a recommendation.

“It could be a Chief Justice directive or merely guidance to the judges. That����ap not been decided,” Court Administrator Christopher Ryan told The Post. “One you don’t have to follow; the other you do.”

The suggested changes are in response to a series of Denver Post stories that revealed how thousands of cases across the state were suppressed from public view, hidden behind judges’ orders to keep them that way.

The Post found that suppression orders and the lawyers’ requests that offered the reasons for the suppression are themselves suppressed from public inspection.

Many of the suppressed cases, The Post reported, were criminal convictions in which defendants were arrested, charged, prosecuted and imprisoned – some for felonies as violent as homicide and sexual assault – while the entire matter remained hidden from public scrutiny.

The newspaper also found that dozens of lawsuits filed against attorneys alleging varying forms of misconduct were being suppressed, most of them after settlements were reached, keeping details of the cases locked away. That����ap in contrast to other professions, such as doctors and architects, which are required to report settlements and verdicts in malpractice cases to state regulators.

Ryan said his office was unaware of a computer glitch that treated suppressed cases as sealed ones and hid their details from all public computers used for record searches.

“It was an 18-year-old bit of programming that no one knew about,” Ryan said. “I was shocked.”

He said the department is reviewing the process of how suppressions are issued.

“We want to look at the matters and how they’re handled procedurally,” he said. “When an order of suppression is issued, there should be a transparent public order.”

Suppressions in a criminal case should be for a specific reason, such as the execution of an arrest warrant or “crucial to moving the case along,” Ryan said.

The Post found many suppressions were issued to protect witnesses or to allow for an investigation to continue unimpeded. In some cases the suppression order has never been lifted.

“You uncovered how no one was reviewing the initial suppression order put into place,” Ryan said. “There must be a finite timeline.”

Suppressions of a civil lawsuit are to include the length of time they will remain restricted, but there is no equivalent criteria for criminal cases.

Whether the criteria will become a binding directive issued by Chief Justice Nathan Coats is to be determined, Ryan said.

Also unclear is whether the new criteria will be retroactive, opening judicial rulings on the more than 3,000 cases that are still suppressed.