EDITORIAL: Don’t punish Aurora domestic violence victims to settle a political grudge

In what seems like a recurring obsession with proposing a solution to seek out some shapeless Aurora problem, at least two city lawmakers have backed the entire community into a corner with a newly imagined standoff.

A far-right contingent of the Aurora City Council is pressing a plan to nuke Aurora’s nationally acclaimed domestic violence court program for what appears to be a vindictive partisan throw-down.

At risk are the precarious lives of thousands of domestic-violence victims in Aurora, who have for decades depended on a sensitive and highly-trained court system to extricate them from dangerous and tragic lives, and to help protect those who return to their abusers in one way or another.

Councilmembers Dustin Zvonek and Danielle Jurinsky are leading a plan to end the ability of Aurora’s municipal court and police to adjudicate domestic violence cases. The reason, they say, is that a recent change in state law would require the city to do what it already does.

Sound suspect?

The special court is so admired and important, because it appreciates how domestic violence is very different than almost any other crime. Often the victim has a change of heart in allowing prosecution of their abusers, out of fear, pragmatism or bad judgment. And the court must sort through all of that. In Colorado, once a crime has been detailed and a suspect identified, a witness-victim is not necessary for prosecution.

But also common in domestic violence cases are crude or ignorant courts that believe they’re acting in the best interest of the victim and community with “get tough” sentences, which often can even further victimize the original victim. Domestic violence “justice” is complicated, especially where children are involved.

Aurora, and Denver, have figured all this out over decades of, literally, trials and errors.

Part of the process, guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, and absolutely key to the American justice system, is the right to an attorney in court, and a right to have qualified counsel provided for those who cannot afford it. Zvonek tried earlier this year to make an end run around that Constitutional provision by trying to find a way to “privatize” the city’s public defender office. The plan failed when no private attorneys offered a plan to make it work. Given that private attorneys make far more than public defenders, the “no thanks” outcome was hardly unexpected.

Separately, state Rep. Mike Weissman, an Aurora Democrat, has for the last few years been pressing for a plan that first would have ended all municipal domestic violence courts, prompted by a concern that some cities gave victim rights advocates and rights of the accused short shrift. This year, that was amended and finally passed, prohibiting municipal domestic violence court programs from privatizing public defense of the accused. Denver backed the bill. Aurora currently follows the new law, and has for decades.

Zvonek is trying to make this a local control issue and an unfunded state mandate case for rejection.

The law simply keeps cities other than Denver and Aurora, which both have large, expert and capable courts, from creating problems with domestic violence adjudication. Places where the new law would have any impact are actually rare in Colorado.

The law has no effect on Aurora’s existing domestic violence program at all. The threat Zvonek and Jurinsky are making is to push the cases into county courts in Brighton and Centennial, where prosecutors there say they have no resources to handle them.

The threat is the very definition of cruel and unusual punishment — for the victims of domestic violence. And the “win” for Zvonek and Jurinsky would be making a partisan political point from the city council dais.

It’s clear that both of these lawmakers are committed and entrenched in their misguided scheme. We would ask the other nine members of the city council to seek out domestic violence victims, their advocates and even the judges who hear these cases to learn for themselves how complicated the issue is, and how Aurora has come to deserve its reputation as a place where these special victims can get almost unattainable justice.

If the city can step away from the ledge, a practical solution may be the city finding a way to help fund the critical public defender system with state money that provides the same thing to counties and judicial districts, a potential win-win in the face of certain loss for everyone in Aurora.