Why are Colorado’s top judges obstructing justice? | Vince Bzdek
I used to have a Jesuit priest for a teacher who said teaching by example isn’t the best way to teach.
It’s the only way to teach.
Father Krieger said the same thing about leading by example.
Right now, the leaders of Colorado’s judicial system are doing the exact opposite of leading by example. Our judges are obstructing the very thing they have sworn to uphold — justice.
At a time when faith in our core American institutions is at an all-time low, this is the absolute worst thing they could be doing. They are the keepers of society’s moral compass — if they’ve lost their sense of what’s right and wrong, then what hope is there for the rest of us?
Three years into what looks and feels like the worst scandal to ever hit Colorado’s judicial system, we are no closer to getting answers as to why the system is such a mess, let alone fixing it. Six investigations have been launched, a new oversight committee created and legislative hearings held, and yet there has essentially been no corrective action since reporter David Migoya first identified the scandal in 2019.
Mindy Masias
At the heart of the scandal is a multimillion-dollar contract awarded to a former judicial department employee who had threatened to expose the personal misconduct of nearly two dozen judges and administrators. Facing dismissal over financial irregularities, Mindy Masias, the former chief of staff of the Supreme Court administrator’s office, was instead handed a $2.75 million five-year contract in March 2019. Christopher Ryan, the state’s chief court administrator who resigned in July 2019 amid Migoya’s investigative reporting into the deal, has said the contract was in exchange for Masias not filing a tell-all discrimination lawsuit.
A memo that emerged during Migoya’s reporting describes what likely would have been in that lawsuit. The memo highlights several instances of alleged personal misconduct by judges over several years that were either never reported or were glossed over, and the memo also contained numerous examples of mistreatment of women within the department.
One of the six investigations launched in the wake of the scandal just released its findings, but the report raises more questions then it answers. The probe found that, contrary to what Ryan claims, there was no explicit quid pro quo agreement between the justices and Masias saying that they were giving her the contract to forestall her tell-all lawsuit. But that’s about all it found.
The investigation led by former Colorado U.S. Attorney Robert Troyer and former Denver Independent Monitor Nicholas Mitchell never looked into whether the allegations of misconduct Masias had raised were true. Instead it found a judicial department largely devoid of knowledge — even by the Supreme Court justices themselves — about how judges are investigated or disciplined in Colorado. That made it difficult for anyone to trust whether their complaints would be investigated, Migoya has reported.
Troyer acknowledges in his report that investigators never interviewed three key players: Masias, Ryan and Eric Brown, the department’s human resources director.
All three were facing criminal charges at the time and refused to be interviewed. An investigation without its three-star witnesses is like the Avs playing without Landeskog, MacKinnon and Makar. It wouldn’t be the real Avs, and this isn’t a real investigation.
In his report, Troyer also points out the many grave mistakes made by attorneys Andrew Rottman, counsel for the chief justice, and Terry Morrison, chief legal counsel for the judicial department. So the question must be asked: why do they still have their jobs?
Troyer’s report made more than a dozen recommendations for change. None of those recommendations have been enacted yet.
But let’s go back to that contract at the heart of the whole thing. If it wasn’t meant to keep Masias quiet, then you have to ask how the justices went so quickly from nearly firing her for fraud to giving her a giant contract. That’s a Monster Truck-like 180 with no explanation.
At what stage when the justices knew that Masias was getting a contract, did they not ask, “Hold on a second, weren’t we just firing her?” The Troyer report found that then-Supreme Court Justice Nathan “Ben” Coats, Ryan and Rottman had agreed that Masias engaged in reimbursement dishonesty and they began options for disciplining her. How is awarding her a $2.75 million contract disciplining her?
An internal audit in August 2018 had found several problems with Masias’ expenses and Ryan had barred her from any travel or out-of-pocket reimbursement, as well as signing any department contracts. Financial officials in the department were adamant that the conduct she engaged in would have gotten them or any of their people fired.
Was Justice Coats suddenly OK giving her the contract as long as she didn’t commit additional fraud? Does that mean a little fraud is acceptable, as long as the dollar amounts aren’t too high? That’s a pretty squishy interpretation of right and wrong.
The main problem here is the justices getting in the way of justice, “protecting the robes,” as Ryan has put it.
“I wholeheartedly dispute the characterizations and statements from the judicial department justices and staff and stand by my previous statements,” Ryan told Migoya after the report was released. “As has been demonstrated repeatedly by the actions of the Supreme Court and the Judicial Branch as a whole … they will take whatever action is necessary to control the narrative and protect the black robes.”
Four of the six investigations into all this are controlled by the judicial department itself. So the fox is investigating the henhouse. That doesn’t give me much hope for justice.
And the independent judicial commission set up to provide better oversight for the judges is having a devil of a time getting any cooperation from the justices to do their job. The Legislature has begun several public hearings into whether the state’s method of investigating and discipling judges needs wholesale reform because of all the roadblocks the Commission of Judicial Discipline has run into in its own inquiry into the scandal. Troyer and the other lead investigator behind this recent report, Mitchell, are testifying about their findings to a Legislative committee on Tuesday.
If all of this is much ado about nothing, why are the judicial commission and the legislative committee having such difficulty getting information?
Why is the judicial department so damn defensive? What are they hiding?
Let’s see what this legislative committee can do to help. But right now, I don’t have faith that the justices themselves will do justice. This mess will require that the legislative committee or the attorney general or the governor recommend appointing someone who is truly independent, a special investigator at the federal level, with subpoena power.
We desperately need someone who can honestly judge our judges.
The Ralph L. Carr Colorado Judicial Center in downtown Denver houses the Colorado Supreme Court and Court of Appeals.
