Home Cory's Story Contact Donate Committee

Colorado Governor - Ritter's record on plea bargains

By Jim Addison, WhizBang Politics, September 30, 2006

The Colorado Governor's campaign to replace Republican Gov. Bill Owens has attracted a great deal of media attention. Originally cast as a tossup contest, recent polls have tended to show the Democratic nominee, Denver District Attorney Bill Ritter, with a persistent lead over Republican Rep. Bob Beauprez.

Several readers here have repeatedly told us that once Ritter's history of sweetheart plea bargain deals came out, the race would change dramatically. It looks like they may be right. Beauprez exposed the goods he has on Ritter in a radio interview with Hugh Hewitt yesterday:

HH: . . . One thing I know we want to do with people who are here illegally, Congressman Beauprez, is send them home if they commit a crime. And evidently, your campaign has begun to discover some things about Bill Ritter, your opponent in the governor's race, that he was not real keen on doing that.

BB: Well, it really boggles the mind, Hugh. But as we've discovered, systematically, his office, while he was Denver D.A., when they would get cases brought to them for violent felons...we've got drug dealers, assault, weapons violations. Instead of deporting these aliens, legal and illegal, what they would do is plea bargain them down to agricultural land trespassing. And why that one? Because it's not a deportable offense. And they just put them right back out on the street. And it just staggers the imagination that somebody would do that, sworn to protect the safety of our neighborhoods and our families.

HH: You know, when I got word from your staff that you would be making this announcement today, I couldn't believe it, because I know D.A.'s often do plea bargains. But you usually plead someone, for example, from armed robbery to something lesser than that in order...if it's a first time offender. But you don't plead felons to misdemeanor, and you don't let them stay in the country if they're deportable. How often did it happen, Bob Beauprez, on Bill Ritter's watch?

BB: We know of almost 200.

HH: Whoa.

BB: I think the count right now stands at 192, and we're still doing an investigation.

HH: That's an assembly line of plea bargains. And what was the offense he plea bargained them to?

BB: Agricultural land trespassing, in the city and county of Denver. If you know anything about Denver, there's not a lot of ag land.

HH: But that's not a lesser included. That doesn't make any sense to me as a lawyer with, you know, a little bit of time at the Department of Justice. Normally, you'd plea people down to something that had some relations...so a weapons violation became agricultural land trespass?

BB: Assault, drug trafficking...the only part of it that is, I guess makes sense to, I assume Bill Ritter, is that it was one of the very few violations they could plea bargain them down to, that did not require deportation...get them out of the country.

Read the whole interview at link above. This could be a race-changing moment. If further research reveals any of the (192, so far) felons who received this gift from Ritter went on to commit more crimes, his campaign could suffer a sudden reversal of fortunes.

It remains to be seen how the lame fMSM will treat this story, though. Judging by experience in Missouri and Virginia this year, the press doesn't seem very interested in outrageous behavior by Democratic nominees.