Opinion ID: 2600494
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Trial Court Shall Determine on Remand Whether the Entire Tenth Judicial District Must be Disqualified

Text: With regard to the District Attorney's Office as a whole, the People urge the court to consider the District Attorney's Screening Policy, see supra note 5, in assessing the likelihood of Chavez's receiving a fair trial. We agree that a properly drafted screening policy would be relevant to the court's discretionary decision as to whether the special circumstances require disqualification of the entire office. See Cleary v. Dist. Court, 704 P.2d 866, 873 (Colo.1985) (concluding that a government prosecutor may be presumed to have some knowledge of the cases prosecuted by his co-workers, but that in circumstances not involving vertical intra-agency relationships . . . the presumption may be rebutted by contrary evidence). [7] In other words, the question of whether a district attorney's office has a screening policy that adequately obviates any special circumstances that might lead to an unfair trial is a question of fact to be determined by the judge. If the screening policy is adequate, then no disqualification is necessary, because there are no special circumstances which would mandate disqualification. On the other hand, if no screening policy exists or the screening policy is for some reason inadequate, the court must determine whether confidential information from a prior representation nevertheless has been and can continue to be adequately screened from others actually prosecuting the case, in view of the nature of the particular office and circumstances of the prior representation. The trial court in the instant case determined that the policy, which applies to any employee of the Office of the District Attorney... who formerly represented clients in criminal cases now pending prosecution in this office, see supra note 3, does not address the circumstances surrounding Chavez's disqualification motion. Specifically, the trial court found that the policy [does] not address the circumstance raised by the defendant in his motion to disqualify as Mr. Turner was never formally retained by the defendant. We agree that the policy as written is ambiguous as to which employees of the District Attorney's Office are governed by its terms. Therefore, the district court must determine whether the particular circumstances render it unlikely that the defendant would receive a fair trial if prosecuted by this district attorney's office.