Colorado’s state court administrator – the highest civilian position in the Judicial Department – last year falsely claimed judicial discipline officials failed to reveal they had admonished a district court judge of misbehavior before the judge was admitted to a senior judge program, the state’s discipline commission said in a letter filed Monday with legislators.
In fact, the commission had admonished the judge for rubbing his hairy chest on a female employee’s back years earlier, the commission said, and the department admitted him to the program anyway.
State Court Administrator Steven Vasconcellos told the Commission on Judicial Discipline in a letter June 11, 2021, that the retiring judge was admitted into the department’s senior judge program and stayed for two years until he was fired for the misconduct after a memo outlining his actions became public in early 2021.
But Vasconcellos was “inaccurate” with the assertion that the judicial department was not told of the misbehavior before the judge was given the senior judge position, the commission says in its letter to legislators. The body that investigates and punishes judicial misconduct told the department about the sanction in August 2018 when the department inquired if there were any sanctions, the letter says.
What’s more, Vasconcellos himself was one of four people to sign off on the judge’s application for the senior judge program while serving as the department’s director of court services after the commission shared the information, according to an independent investigation into the circumstances of the misconduct allegation by Investigations Law Group.
Vasconcellos did not immediately respond to a request from The Denver Gazette for comment.
The revelation is the first that Vasconcellos knew of the judge’s prior discipline, did not follow up with any questions about it and approved his admission to the senior judge program, but later represented that the department did not know of it.
The department last month denied several requests by The Denver Gazette for the June 11, 2021, letter under its open records rules, saying it was protected from disclosure.
Vasconcellos was director of court services in 2018, department letterhead at that time shows. He was appointed as state court administrator in October 2019 three months after his predecessor, Christopher Ryan, resigned amid newspaper stories about a multi-million-dollar contract awarded to a former employee who was being fired.
About 16 months later, Ryan alleged the contract was actually a quid-pro-quo deal to ensure the employee, the State Court Administrator's Office former Chief of Staff Mindy Masias, would not file a tell-all sex-discrimination lawsuit alleging the misconduct by judges and other officials was disciplined more leniently than her. Ryan said the deal was approved by then-Chief Justice Nathan “Ben” Coats.
The Supreme Court denied the assertion at the time and a subsequent investigation by a firm the department hired came to the same conclusion, that there was no contract-for-silence scheme and that Ryan helped engineer the deal with the help of Masias and then-Human Resources Director Eric Brown.
In its letter Monday to the legislative committee exploring changes to the judicial discipline process, the commission’s executive director, Christopher Gregory, outlined how Vasconcellos wrongly told the commission it had not done its job.
“From records only recently provided from the Commission, the Department learned that the Commission privately admonished the judge, which had not previously been disclosed despite the Department’s due diligence before awarding the judge a senior judge contract,” the commission quotes Vasconcellos as having written the commission on June 11, 2021. “Chief Justice (Brian) Boatright thereafter notified the judge of the cancellation of the contract after learning of the private admonition.”
The Adams County district judge was retiring and, like other retiring judges, applied for the program that allows them to continue working on the bench from time to time. It’s normal for the department to request a discipline history from the commission before approving a judge’s application. Senior judges are assigned duties by the state court administrator’s office.
The judge, who has not been publicly identified, was admonished in May 2008 for “serious misconduct including displaying naked skin, the physical touching/rubbing of his chest on a woman’s back, and inappropriate commentary,” according to the ILG report issued last month. It included a solicitation to “come sit on my lap.”
ILG concluded that “insufficient action occurred” by the discipline commission, calling the admonishment “the mildest sanction possible.”
Additionally, ILG found that no one in the Judicial Department – including Vasconcellos, then the director of court services – “followed up on this notification from Commission on Judicial Discipline” when it told the department of the admonishment.
ILG did not name Vasconcellos as one of the document’s signers, but rather only the department titles of the four, which included Ryan as state court administrator, Chief Justice Coats, and the administrator of the department’s senior judge program. Coats retired in December 2020.
A two-page memo from January 2019 that’s at the center of the judiciary scandal noted how “Judge exposed and rubbed his hairy chest on a female employee’s back; no action taken against judge; judge is currently being considered for the senior judge program.”
ILG noted that action was taken against the judge for the misconduct. However, much of the discipline commission’s work is done in secret and its punishments typically remain confidential.
