Aurora could turn domestic violence cases away from muni court over state bill

AURORA | Aurora City Council member Danielle Jurinsky declared Friday that council conservatives would sooner overhaul how domestic violence cases are prosecuted in Aurora than back down from trying to privatize the work of the city’s public defenders.

The comments were made in light of a Colorado House bill that would prohibit flat-fee contracts for public defense in cities such as Aurora that try domestic violence cases in their municipal courts.

“If we continue prosecuting domestic violence cases, we are locked into our current city public defender’s office. We would not be able to bring in outside counsel, which we’re not going to back off from,” Jurinsky said during the March 29 meeting of the council’s Federal, State and Intergovernmental Relations Policy Committee.

“Should this (bill) pass, the City of Aurora will no longer prosecute domestic violence cases. So go ahead and write about that. Go ahead and put it in your pipe and smoke it, because that’s where we’re at.”

Jurinsky is the chairwoman of the council’s Public Safety, Courts and Civil Service Policy Committee and the architect of many of the current conservative majority’s criminal justice policies, including mandatory minimum jail sentences for crimes such as shoplifting and defrauding restaurants.

Friday’s comments marked a fiery departure from Councilmember Dustin Zvonek’s words a few weeks earlier, when the city’s invitation to private law firms to bid on replacing the Aurora Public Defender’s Office expired with zero bids submitted.

Zvonek, who sponsored the bid process, said at the time that he viewed the outcome as the end of the council’s exploration into whether shifting to a private model could save the city money on public defense.

“I said from the beginning that I wanted to explore this because I believed that there was a way for us to provide the same level of service at a lower cost,” Zvonek said March 11. “Obviously, one side said ‘no,’ and others were saying ‘yes.’ I just wanted to find out what the real answer was. We’ll never know for sure.”

Throughout the process, he stressed that he would only entertain bids that provided the same level of service at a lower cost.

Despite the lack of evidence that emerged from the bidding process showing the city could save money through privatization, Jurinsky indicated March 29 that most council members want to continue down the path of abolishing the office.

She also accused Aurora’s chief public defender, Elizabeth Cadiz, of masterminding the bill.

“I’m sure that’s where this comes from, in an attempt to stop us from trying another (request for proposals) or continuing our efforts to get rid of our in-house public defender’s office,” Jurinsky said.

Cadiz attended the virtual meeting Friday but did not reply at the time to Jurinsky’s accusations. Cadiz later declined to comment, saying she was worried about retaliation.

Rep. Mike Weissman is one of the prime sponsors of the bill that would continue to allow private contracts for public defense where attorneys are paid at least the same hourly rate as attorneys under contract with the state’s Office of the Alternate Defense Counsel, while banning flat-fee contracts in cities like Aurora.

Such contracts have been widely denounced by defense attorneys and legal watchdog groups, who say flat-fee agreements to provide public defense discourage lawyers from taking the time to provide effective representation, since they are guaranteed the same amount of money regardless of how much time they spend on a case.

Other prime sponsors of the state bill include Sen. Rhonda Fields, Sen. Dafna Michaelson Jenet and Rep. Monica Duran.

Aurora’s invitation for law firms to bid on replacing the Aurora Public Defender’s Office specified that firms would be paid a flat annual fee. To get around the potential obstacle to privatization, Jurinsky said she and Zvonek would support an ordinance halting the prosecution of domestic violence cases in the Aurora Municipal Court if Weissman’s bill is voted into law.

“If this passes, a draft ordinance is already in place. Councilmember Zvonek let Judge (Shawn) Day know yesterday we would no longer handle (domestic violence) cases in the City of Aurora, and the respective budgets will reflect that immediately,” Jurinsky said.

Zvonek and Jurinsky did not respond to inquiries about the details and potential impacts of the ordinance. City officials have in the past defended Aurora’s decades-old practice of handling domestic violence cases at the local level, saying it empowers the city to make sure victims obtain justice.

Former city attorney and council member Charlie Richardson said domestic violence cases were moved into the municipal court in the 1980s, when Aurora lawmakers were concerned about other jurisdictions not making the phenomenon a priority.

Handling cases within city limits also eases the burden on victims, witnesses and police officers who might otherwise have to travel to courthouses in Centennial or Brighton for hearings.

“It made a lot of sense to consolidate,” Richardson said. “What a burden it would be, again, on the victims and the witnesses to get up to Brighton and have to travel to Centennial, because in criminal cases there are so many continuances.”

Jurinsky said during the committee meeting that Arapahoe County, which overlaps most of Aurora, and at least one of the district attorneys serving Aurora residents had been informed of the proposal to take domestic violence off the municipal court’s docket.

Halting the municipal prosecution of domestic violence could force those cases into county courtrooms. Anders Nelson, a spokesman for Arapahoe County, wrote in an email Monday that the county was “unable to confirm” whether a representative had been informed about the proposal prior to the March 29 committee meeting.

“We look forward to proactive engagement on this and other policy conversations with the City of Aurora in the future,” Nelson wrote.

Karmen Carter, executive director of Gateway Domestic Violence Services in Aurora, said she recognizes pros and cons of moving domestic violence cases out of municipal court, mentioning the inconvenience of having to attend hearings in Brighton or Centennial as a downside and accountability in the form of tougher penalties that may be handed down by a county judge as a potential upside.

However, Carter noted that the ability of county courts to pick up the slack of prosecutions will ultimately depend on funding.

“My hope is that people aren’t so swept up in the politics and continue to prioritize what’s in the best interest of victims of domestic violence,” she said.

Carter said she was not informed about the proposal before it was announced Friday. The Sentinel also could not confirm with a spokesperson from the 18th Judicial District Attorney’s Office that the agency had been notified beforehand.

Councilmember Angela Lawson, who chairs the committee that met March 29, did not respond to Jurinsky’s comments but said Friday that she opposes Weissman’s bill because it would limit the autonomy of local governments like the city.

After the meeting, Weissman said he was familiar with the ongoing push to privatize the Aurora Public Defender’s Office and pointed out that the city’s current model has been praised both in Colorado and at the national level by professional associations.

However, he described the latest bill as having a statewide focus, building on a 2023 law that requires municipal courts to comply with the notification requirements of the Victim Rights Act.

“What I know from eight years in the Capitol is that survivors of crimes want things to be handled efficiently, professionally and quickly, and to not be upset later on appeal. The effective provision of counsel to the accused in the first place is part of that,” he said.

“When you start to talk about a flat-fee type of model or an hourly model with a cap, you start to get into questions about whether that criminal defense representation can be done in a constitutionally sufficient and legally ethical way.”

The council committee’s March 29 discussion concerned a draft of the bill, which was introduced April 1 in the House with minimal changes.