Posted by
NOTLEGALROADKILLYET on Thursday, February 01, 2007 12:24:38 AM
Immediately below this essay is an unpublished opinion by the Colorado Court of Appeals. It concerns a request by a citizen to have three people prosecuted for perjury.
On its face, the decision sounds quite reasonable. After all, the prosecutor conferred with two other prosecutors and assigned an investigator before deciding not to prosecute. He chose not to prosecute because the case was complicated and he thought he might not win.
The problem is that you could have a convention of Colorado prosecutors and assistant prosecutors, and ask how many have prosecuted ANY case of civil perjury in the last five years. My bet is that you would be very lucky to see five hands go up in a roomful of more than a hundred prosecutors, and that isn't five prosecutions a year, it is five prosecutions in five years in all of Colorado.
That fact makes the court's reliance on the judgement of three, or even three hundred prosecutors that the case was unwinable a thin reed, indeed. Prosecutors don't win perjury cases because they fear trying to win them. It is a form of judicial cowardice.
The court admits that at least one of the district judges who looked at the evidence thought that the perjury case was viable.
By making the decision this court made, the three judges involved, Chief Judge Janice B Davidson, and Judges Hume and Pierce ceded the courts to the criminals and the crooked lawyers who use perjury to steal from the public.
Once again, lawyers protect judges, judges protect lawyers, but no one protects the public.
I expect to be writing more on this subject when I can get more information.