Colorado’s second-highest court ruled Thursday that a Saguache County judge was not biased against a defendant whose case she briefly worked on during her previous career as a public defender.
A jury convicted Donald L. Garcia of auto theft in a trial presided over by Chief Judge Amanda C. Hopkins. On appeal, it emerged that Hopkins served as Garcia’s attorney prior to her appointment when she represented her assigned public defender at a single brief hearing early in the trial. Although she was unqualified as a judge to handle the case under state law, neither Hopkins, the defense nor the prosecution made the issue clear in court.
Initially, a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals ordered Garcia to be retried, arguing that Hopkins’ participation made her a biased judge under the law and affected the fundamental fairness of the trial. However, the state Supreme Court upheld Garcia’s conviction by a 4-3 vote, with the majority arguing that his defense attorneys almost certainly knew about the conflict and kept quiet.
After the decision, Garcia asked the Supreme Court to give him another chance on the appeals court, citing his alternative argument that Hopkins was not only biased under Colorado law, but was actually biased against him. Moreover, Hopkins’ participation presented an “unconstitutional potential for bias.”
The Supreme Court reversed its decision and directed the appeals court to further consider whether there had been a violation of Garcia’s constitutional rights or whether Garcia had another opportunity to prove that Hopkins’ involvement warranted a retrial. The appeals judges responded with some bewilderment as to what the Supreme Court expected of them.
“We begin by noting that it is not entirely clear what we are asked to decide,” wrote Judge Ted C. Tow III, who wrote the original decision overturning Garcia’s conviction.
Tow argued that if Garcia’s trial lawyers had waived his right to argue Hopkins’s unfitness to serve as a judge – as the Supreme Court majority believed – Garcia’s other options for challenging Hopkins’ participation would not have been futile.
The only claim that remained viable, however, was Garcia’s assertion that Hopkins was in fact biased against him. Under these circumstances, the panel concluded that there was no evidence that Hopkins was biased against the person who was her client “even in the most technical sense.”
“And he does not address the obvious possibility that a lawyer who becomes a judge could be biased due to their previous involvement in the case, there could well be bias in favor of the former client,” Tow wrote in his August 15 report.
The case is People v. Garcia.
