Perfect Murder, Perfect Town - Lawrence Schiller [112]
In fact, the Boulder D.A.’s office even is known to have contacted defense attorneys before an arrest is made to begin the discussions—a rather unusual tactic.
And so it was noteworthy that Hunter said he will not make an arrest in the JonBenét Ramsey murder case until all the evidence is sitting squarely on his desk.
“I am Mr. Evidence,” Hunter said with a straight face.
—Chuck Green, columnist,
The Denver Post, February 28, 1997
When Jeff Hendry of the Boulder Sheriff’s Department read Chuck Green’s column, he smiled. He had more than one story of his own to tell about Hunter’s office. For instance, there was the time the sheriff’s department busted a drug dealer in his house and found a kilo and a half of cocaine, $80,000 in cash, semiautomatic weapons, Mac 10s, Uzis, and various handguns. While Hendry and his fellow officers were searching the house, his pager went off. Bill Wise’s phone number appeared on the screen. When Hendry called, Wise told him the money was being seized under civil statutes and had already been settled: $20,000 of the $80,000 would go to the drug dealer’s attorney. According to the law, proceeds from drug sales were to be confiscated, not given to the charged person. The cash had been sitting on top of the cocaine. It was clear to Hendry that this money represented cash from drug sales and should be seized. It was not covered by civil statutes, Hendry argued, which allowed money to remain the property of the suspect. Wise remained firm: the DA had already decided how it would be handled. Hendry concluded that Bill Wise’s first concern was that the defense attorney be paid. When Hendry asked himself why, the only answer he could come up with was that this was Boulder.
The Denver Post’s acid column about Hunter was the first in a series of newspaper articles and TV broadcasts that would attack the Boulder DA for his office’s laid-back approach to the law.
Plea bargaining had been a major part of Hunter’s first campaign platform, and he addressed it in his second term too. In the late 1970s, the DA’s office had to contend with fifteen hundred felonies a year, at a time when there was only one criminal judge on the bench. A judge could handle perhaps sixty cases a year, according to Hunter. By the late 1990s, Boulder County had two thousand felony cases a year and only two district court criminal judges. Like all DAs, Hunter had to handle the overflow within the financial means of the community. Even in Boulder, with its low crime rate, plea bargaining was unavoidable.
I would have difficulty being a DA in Boulder. My personal philosophy involves taking a hard stand, using jails, using prisons, standing up to those who argue that you can fight crime by being nice to folks and seeking rehabilitation over and above punishment. Retribution has its own rehabilitative component.
Hunter has an unusual way of resolving cases. He doesn’t call it plea bargaining. He calls it precharging negotiations, and he does it before charges are filed. It is a unique way of looking at things. You can run a system that way, an effective system, a system that’s in tune with the community. And it works very well in Boulder.
Pete Hofstrom, who heads Hunter’s felony division, is perfect for the job. He takes everything in, is excellent analytically. He can spot an issue, understand a case, and resolve it. He’s effective in his job. But he’s not a dynamic trial lawyer.
Everyone likes Pete. And he can flourish in a system with the Boulder prosecution philosophy for a long time.
—Robert Grant
Back in ’78, Alex had this no-plea-bargaining policy. It got him national attention, but I don’t think it lasted a year. We all realized that plea bargaining serves a purpose. It’s not an evil thing. It’s something that works.
Today I’m a defense attorney in Boulder. Back then I was with the public defender’s office. During that no-plea-bargaining time, we defense attorneys were encouraged to come and have a dialogue with the DA. We plea bargained through precharging negotiations.