AURORA | Some details are beginning to emerge about a campaign driven by an Aurora city lawmaker to force a recall election of the local district attorney among unproven allegations of inappropriately lenient prosecutions.
Councilmember Danielle Jurinsky is promising proof to back up her effort to recall 18th Judicial District Attorney Amy Padden, but the nascent DA and her staff say Jurinsky has provided only misinformation.
“The effort to recall Amy Padden is underway,” Jurinsky, a Republican, said during the city council meeting July 14. “I look forward to working around the clock to gather the signatures that I must in honor of Kaitlyn Weaver. I will not let her life be in vain.”
Jurinsky’s pursuit of recalling Padden, a Democrat, is linked to a 24-year-old Aurora woman named Kaitlyn Weaver was struck and killed in July 2024 by a noncitizen immigrant 15-year-old boy whose family was seeking asylum. The juvenile was reported to be driving faster than 90 miles per hour in a residential area and without a license in 2024, according to CBS News and Jurinsky, who posted the report on her Facebook and her X account while demanding a recall of Padden, May 16.
Since the case involved a juvenile, Arapahoe County DA officials say they are unable to release any court documents, citing restrictions under state law. CBS News and Jurinsky have reported that the boy received two years of probation with community service, and the Denver Gazette reported in May that the boy and his family were detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Jurinsky said she planned to recall Padden for only giving him two years of probation, after the previous 18th Judicial District Attorney allegedly told Weaver’s family they would pursue the maximum sentence in youth corrections, according to media reports.
In any court case, including this one, the prosecution, being the district attorney’s office, will make a recommendation for sentencing, but the judge makes the final decision for the outcome, Padden said.
Padden was sworn into her first term in January. Jurinsky is up for re-election to her at-large seat on the city council this November.
Padden and the deputy district attorney, Ryan Brackley, who determined the sentence request for the boy, both said they were unable to comment about the decision or the boy’s term of probation because he is a juvenile.
Jurinsky said one reason she waited until now to recall Padden was that she had to wait until she had been in office as the district attorney for six months before she could begin a recall process.
In July, there was another public controversy launched by Jurinsky over a case where a man identified as Solomon Galligan, 34, was ruled incompetent to stand trial in an Aurora 2024 kidnapping case. He has previously been accused of incidents of assault, and he was ruled incompetent to stand trial in some of those cases, according to Colorado court records.
In the Aurora April 2024 case, Galligan is accused of attempting to kidnap a young boy at Black Forest Hill Elementary School. A court date last week in the 18th Judicial District was vacated after his lawyers requested a competency evaluation. In that case, witnesses said Galligan came onto the school playground, appeared disoriented and confused, and tried to grab a student before school officials could intervene.
Jurinsky has made multiple claims that Padden abandoned the case over competency concerns and that Galligan was going to be allowed back onto the streets without court intervention or concern on Padden’s part.
After mostly silence on Padden’s part, she pushed back on a Facebook post last week.
“That comprehensive, 63-page report by a licensed doctor concluded that Galligan suffers from multiple mental health conditions and is mentally incompetent to stand trial and not restorable to competency within the foreseeable future,” Padden said in a statement, refuting Jurinsky’s inaccurate claims.
Padden said in her statement that she had no power to decide whether to dismiss Galligan’s case, that it was a matter for a court and judge, not a prosecutor.
“If the court decides that the defendant is incompetent and unlikely to be restored or to maintain competency during the pendency of the case, the court is required by statute to dismiss the charges, and our office is legally prohibited from taking this case to trial,” Padden said in the statement.
She has stated previously that she disagrees with Colorado state lawmakers who passed laws making the action mandatory.
“As the District Attorney, I have many concerns about this statutory process and its impact on community safety in situations where charges must be dismissed,” she said in the statement. “Even before the defense’s motion to dismiss was filed in this case, I was speaking with legislators about proposed reforms to the statute. I will continue those discussions to collaborate about a solution that promotes community safety.”
Padden also said that Galligan will not be released, as Jurinsky alleged.
“If the motion to dismiss is granted here, Galligan will not be released into the community at that time,” Padden said in the statement. “Although they were previously released when courts in other jurisdictions dismissed prior cases, this defendant has been civilly committed for continued treatment in a state mental health hospital, which provides secure, inpatient psychiatric care.”
Jurinsky also claimed, without providing details, that Padden has mishandled many other cases by not seeking sufficient justice, dismissing cases, or offering probation instead of harsher prosecution. She told the Sentinel that on Monday night at a scheduled city council meeting, she would provide a list of names and cases that Jurinsky thinks the 18th Judicial District Attorney has mishandled.
Tuesday, Jurinsky said she would wait for a procedural event linked to the recall petition request before releasing the list of names and cases.
From Jan. 14, when Padden took office, through July 23, Arapahoe County has filed 1,572 felonies, 8,303 misdemeanors, and 553 petty infractions, totaling 10,428, according to Eric Ross, the spokesperson for the 18th Judicial District.
Aug. 4 is the deadline for the 18th Judicial District to file a response to a Galligan motion to dismiss the charges against him.
“Regarding Solomon Gallagan’s competency evaluations, those are suppressed and not public record,” Ross said. “Competency evaluations in any criminal case are suppressed.”
A recall petition was submitted for approval by the Colorado Secretary of State, and a recall committee has been created for Padden, according to secretary of state records. The committee and recall petitions have been filed by Denver attorney Suzanne Taheri as the registered agent. The status of the recall can be tracked on the Secretary of State’s website.
Taheri was the Colorado Deputy Secretary of State for seven years, where she worked on election issues and chaired the state Initiative title setting board. Last year, she represented Republican Mayor Mike Coffman in a failed 2023 effort to ask voters to create a different form of Aurora government.
Since the recall paperwork was filed, Padden has been given until July 30 to respond to the petition request.
If the request to circulate recall petitions is approved, the committee will have 60 days to collect “25% of the total votes cast at the last preceding general election for that office,” according to the Secretary of State.
In Padden’s case, that would be 82,737 signatures. Before the recall is filed, the “designated election official” must be notified to provide a written cost estimate of conducting the recall election.
The approximate cost was immediately unclear for a petition campaign to collect the required signatures to force an election.
Typically, elections take a lot of time to collect signatures. Committees usually hire professional signature collection firms, but Jurinsky said she plans “to work around the clock” to get the signatures.
Coffman’s 2023 campaign raised more than $120,000 in an effort to collect about 20,000 signatures. The campaign failed to collect the required signatures in time to get the question on the fall ballot.
“We haven’t received petition format approval from the state and likely won’t until Thursday, so we are not taking donations until that happens,” Taheri said in an email. “Everyone involved (including me) is a volunteer, so there is no ‘firm’ handling the campaign or price estimate.”
The logistics mean that if the recall petition effort is successful, it would force a special election, unless it coincides with the primaries next summer, which is unlikely.
A recall election for Arapahoe County is estimated to cost the county $863,280, according to Arapahoe County clerk officials.
“Arapahoe County would be responsible for 55% of the final costs. The Department of State would be responsible for 45% of the final costs,” Jack Todd, a spokesperson for the Secretary of State, said in an email. “Should the DA remain in office after all is said and done, the Department of State would also be responsible for the costs expended by the DA in support of her defense.”
If the petition is approved and the signatures are received within 60 days, several additional steps must be taken before a recall election is conducted. These steps include a signature verification process, a protest period, a hearing and determination on the protest, and a nomination of a successor.
“I thank you to everybody who has reached out, who has donated, who is continuing to donate, who is volunteering and planning events,” Jurinsky said during Monday’s city council meeting. “I am doing this in honor and in memory of Kaitlyn Weaver, a 24-year-old Aurora resident. Her death will not be in vain, and I have promised her father that justice will be served.”
Padden says she is just getting started
Padden calls herself a change agent as the newest district attorney for the 18th Judicial District.
During and just after her election, she has pledged to promote greater transparency and reduce recidivism through strategic, preventive measures involving people convicted of crimes.
The Sentinel conducted two interviews with Padden, one in November, after she won the election, and again in March of this year. The Sentinel also followed up in May to track her progress on her goals in office.
Padden has decades of experience, working in positions ranging from executive assistant to U.S. attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice, to Colorado’s special assistant Attorney General, and Deputy District Attorney in the 11th and 5th Judicial District.
Throughout her election against former Arapahoe County DA Carol Chambers, Padden said a focus on diversion and rehabilitation would be key to reducing crime in the region.
“My ultimate goal is to make our community safer and to reduce crime, and I think we will do that through these programs,” Padden said to the Sentinel after winning her election in November. “It’s not something where we’re going to see an immediate result, but I am very optimistic that at the end of four years, we will find our communities safer than they are right now.”
Transparency, enhancing the diversion program and the Conviction Integrity Unit, and taking additional steps to ensure that people are being treated equitably within their community are also areas Padden said she wanted to start with.
The Conviction Integrity Unit reviews potentially wrongful convictions and takes actions to improve or correct prior wrongful convictions.
Transparency, prosecution data and equity in courts
“An increase in transparency is helpful,” Padden said to the Sentinel in March. “That said, we’re bound by ethical rules that include what we can say about a pending case or a pending investigation.”
While Padden hopes to be transparent, there are reasons they keep some privacy. Information can influence the jury pool, and they have to consider safety considerations and grand jury secrecy. There are also state laws and mandates that require district courts to maintain individuals’ privacy, such as in cases involving juveniles or the suppression of competency evaluations.
“There’s a bunch of competing instruments, and so we’ll have to find the right balance of making sure we’re complying with our ethical and legal obligations by the same time, giving the public the information, as much information as we can, consistent with those obligations,” she said.
During Padden’s campaign, she said she wanted to make outside audits of prosecution data public. Although it won’t be easy, it will be one step toward greater transparency in the district.
“It’s a big project,” Padden said.
Prosecution data could be used to create more transparency through the Prosecutor Performance Indicators, she said. This can help the district examine race, ethnicity and other factors that may reveal discrepancies in sentencing.
“I think something that could help with that data is I want to have a Conviction Integrity Review unit,” Padden said.
A Conviction Integrity Unit reviews past cases to investigate integrity and potential wrongful convictions. Oftentimes, District Attorney’s offices only look at cases of actual innocence, and that’s what the 18th traditionally did, Padden said. Some other counties, such as Jefferson and Denver Counties, also examine aspects like equity and sentencing.
Padden used the example of disparities in sentencing in the 1990s linked to convictions for using and selling crack cocaine and powder cocaine. It was a justice disparity she observed first-hand working in the federal court system at the time.
Historical data shows that white people convicted of power cocaine crimes received substantially lesser sentences than Black people convicted of crack cocaine crimes.
“Everyone realizes now that those sentence disparities had a disparate impact on Black men. They just did, and so once we look at this data, I think we may find other instances of disparities,” She said. “We may have people come to us asking for a reduction in sentences based on disparities.”
These disparities were also historically known for creating higher recidivism rates in the Black community, creating the pipeline of single-parent households and poverty in Black families, according to many studies, including the study “The Severely-Distressed African American Family in the Crack Era: Empowerment is not Enough,” published in the National Library of Medicine.
One thing that is entirely within the DA’s discretion is whether to file habitual sentence enhancers for someone with three prior felonies, greatly enhancing the mandatory minimums, she said.
Previous district attorneys in the 18th Judicial District, like Carol Chambers, regularly used many “sentence enhancements” to increase penalties for sentencing, with some cases in which Padden said she might be interested in going back and looking at whether someone would have been prosecuted as harshly if they had been in a different district.
“My constituents really wanted this,” Padden said in November. “They want a review process like this to make sure that we have equity within our sentencing system and to address the inequities where we find them.”
Padden said she planned to apply for a federal grant to fund staff for the Conviction Integrity Unit, but the grant is no longer available due to recent actions by the Trump administration and cuts to Federal funding. She said her other option would be to request more funding in her budget from Arapahoe County, but that only occurs at certain times of the year, and she will need to wait. She said she is also looking into private grant funding and other forms of financing.
“That unit’s on hold right now, but we’re still working on developing a process for any requests that we have that come through the door, right now,” Padden said. “We’re working on that process, and we’ll at least be able to get an internal process going, hopefully shortly. It still is my goal to stand up that unit. It just is going to take me a little longer than I anticipated at this point.”
In an attempt to reduce recidivism, Padden made minor changes to the diversion program by adding more diversion counselors and “front-loading” the diversion decision. Now, a referral for someone to be placed on diversion occurs during the intake process, rather than later on.
When a case arrives at the office, the intake unit reviews it and determines the charges that will be filed, and then it is assigned to a prosecutor who will handle the case. Previously, the prosecutors handling the case made diversion decisions, which meant that a number of different prosecutors made those decisions at various points in time, Padden said.
“We have front-loaded that into the intake division, and so they’re able to make those decisions early, which frankly, are going to get the offenders into diversion earlier and connect them with resources in the program earlier,” Padden said.
Retention and staffing after the split of the district
In 2020, state lawmakers decided to remove Douglas, Elbert and Lincoln County cases from the dockets in the 18th Judicial District by 2025, leaving the remaining 18th Judicial District to handle cases from Arapahoe County, where more than 80 percent of Aurora residents reside.
This split resulted in vacancies and turnover in the 18th Judicial District, as some employees chose to relocate to the new judicial district due to factors such as distance, time and overall preference.
“We’ve got a lot of really great experienced prosecutors who really want to stay in Arapahoe County,” Padden said. “They want to serve Arapahoe County in particular.”
As of May 21, the 18th hired nine new prosecutors and has no existing vacancies. The 18th Judicial District is budgeted for 72 prosecutors, including Padden, according to Eric Ross, the spokesperson for the 18th Judicial District. They were able to fill all vacancies with eight new prosecutors this year.
Burnout is common among prosecutors due to the high volume of work and the demanding nature of their responsibilities, industry officials say. Being understaffed exacerbates the issue, making it harder for districts to prevent burnout.
“We see really terrible things, and it’s easy for folks to get burned out,” Padden said. “I want to make sure that we’re doing what we can to make sure that the caseloads are manageable.”
Padden said she wants to continue looking at the caseload of Arapahoe County, especially with the change in reconfiguring the district.
Before the split, the 18th Judicial District had 267 employees; now, it has 182, including the district attorney. These positions include attorneys, investigators, victim-witness advocates and other judicial officers.
On the court side, which is staffed separately and funded through the state, the state’s funding was less than what was requested to handle additional misdemeanor domestic violence cases that began being transferred from Aurora Municipal Court to Arapahoe County in July, following an Aurora City Council vote last year.
“We were supposed to be getting in the 18th Judicial District in Arapahoe County, another county court judge, and county court judges handle misdemeanor cases,” She said. “Unfortunately, that got stripped.”
The state budget for the 18th did not provide the additional funding the courts were requesting. This resulted in a $3.1 million shortfall to staff a judge, 24 probation officers, and supervisors, as well as cover additional operating expenses. There are concerns that misdemeanor cases may be dropped due to staffing shortages, especially with the increased volume from domestic violence cases from Aurora.
“So while we are prepared,” Padden said. “Unfortunately, it looks like the court and the public defender on probation are not getting additional resources, and they’re going to need to absorb those within the existing case load. So I don’t know how that’s going to work, because I don’t have any control over that.”
What’s to come
Padden said there are other ideas to come depending on how the system works while she is working as the district attorney. She said she will continue to review policies and procedures in areas such as officer-involved shootings and bail and bonds. If she identifies areas for improvement, she will consider making those changes as needed.
Many of the changes made so far are new to the district and will take time to see results, but should have noticeable impacts in the next year, Ross said.
No doubt, the process linked to a recall election will be time consuming for Padden, and then even more so should a recall question make the ballot. For now, she said she’s focused on the job.
“It’s not a super fast process when you’re looking at grants, or you’re looking at hiring, and modifications to diversion or things of that nature, but we are working diligently to make those changes and tweak the office a little bit to better serve the constituents,” Ross said. “I think you will see those results down the road. It’s just not an instantaneous process. So bear with us as we’re making those changes.”
Mz Jurinsky is hopeing to get re-elected this November. Whatmore needs to be said? In the attempted kidnapping case, the DA has no say on judging the compancey of a defendant. Of the Hit and run case, the DA has no decision on lenght of sentencing. No reason for a recall here. But plenty of reason to get Jurinsky’s name in the news and fire up a MAGA base who, at the moment, just want the Epstein files released (don’t we all).
Suzanne Taheri, enough said.
Ah,yes Ms Jurinsky and Ms Taheri— The seeking of political power for one’s own gain And not for the well-being of communityis a Seductive temptation.
Let’s get this straight. First, Jurinsky is the council member most responsible for removing the Domestic Violence program out of the Aurora Municipal Court endangering victims of domestic violence by force feeding the cases to the District Courts but not providing any additional judges, or court staff to hear those cases. Then after leaving these victims without victim advocates and courts to protect them she proposes to recall District Attorney Amy Padden. Isn’t this really just a smokescreen by Jurinsky to cover up how she kicked aside Aurora’s crime victims in favor of domestic abusers. But wait a minute why wouldn’t she do that? While she is not a domestic violence abuser she sure is an abusive bully with everyone else. Just ask her fellow council members of how abusive and narcissistic she is with them. Nobody can say anything without fear of her retribution and wrath just like Aurora’s domestic violence victims must now be in fear of their abusers.
What a desperate attention grab. Anyone supposedly “donating” to this recall effort may as well light their money on fire.
Reminds me of the 2019 rash of five failed recalls that those of Jurinsky’s ilk tried to run. If she’s convincing anyone to donate to this immature plea for media coverage, I’ve got a bridge to sell ya.