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Testimony tangled in NCIC case

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By Karen E. Crummy, The Denver Post, February 3, 2008

Denver district attorney staffers offered additional information Friday about why they accessed a restricted government database while staying in close contact with members of Bill Ritter's gubernatorial campaign.

Federal court testimony from the staffers came in the case of an immigration agent who has been charged with three federal misdemeanors for entering the National Crime Information Center database and obtaining information about an accused heroin dealer who received an unusual plea agreement from then-District Attorney Ritter's office.

The agent, Cory Voorhis, gave the information to Ritter's 2006 opponent, Bob Beauprez, who used it in a television ad.

However, at issue is whether the DA's office accessed the same restricted database and gave information regarding the identity of the felon to the Ritter campaign.

Voorhis' lawyers are trying to show that he was unjustly singled out for prosecution. U.S. District Judge John L. Kane continued the hearing until Tuesday on whether to grant Voorhis' motion to dismiss the case.

Phone logs show DA staff traded calls with Stephanie Villafuerte, who was working for the Ritter campaign. She called Lynn Kimbrough, leaving a message asking about the felon, Carlos Estrada-Medina, on Oct. 10, the day the Ritter ad aired.

After at least three more phone calls between Kimbrough and Villafuerte and at least three others between Villafuerte and Chuck Lepley, second-in-charge in the DA's office, Lepley ordered a staffer to run Estrada-Medina through the NCIC.

Lepley testified Friday that Ritter, his family and his campaign had been threatened in early October 2006. That is probably why, he said, he had conversations with Villafuerte. Asked whether any of the phone calls were in regard to Estrada-Medina, Lepley said: "I don't believe they were."

Lepley further testified that he had a staffer access the database because of "requests from the media and campaigns," including Ritter's campaign.

However, asked later whether anyone from the Ritter campaign asked him or other DA staffers to run Estrada-Medina through the database, he said no, and that if they had he would've called Ritter himself because it would've been inappropriate.

Kimbrough, the communications director for the DA's office, has said that the media was trying to find out whether Estrada-Medina was the same person as Walter Noel Ramos, who after getting probation in Denver went on to commit a sex crime in San Francisco. That was why she asked Lepley to help her.

But the records of cellphone calls and call logs released by the DA's office show no influx of media calls.

From the hearing

Jan Simkins, an agent at the Colorado Bureau of Investigations, testified that on Oct. 12, 2006, Denver DA Bill Ritter's lawyer Trey Rogers called at 3 p.m. to ask the CBI to look into possible misuse of a crime-information database. The DA's office did not access the database until 3:48 p.m. that day...

Simkins and Manual Olmos, an agent with Homeland Security's office of professional responsibility, testified that they did not pursue an investigation of two individuals in Texas who accessed the same information in NCIC at the request of either the GOP political group Trailhead or the Colorado Republican Party, or both...

Although DA office spokeswoman Lynn Kimbrough has maintained that the NCIC was accessed to answer media questions, an FBI agent testified that Denver DA Mitch Morrissey told him there was a different reason for examining the Ritter ad: State law prohibits false advertising by those seeking office.

Previously, no one has suggested the DA's office was investigating the veracity of the Bob Beauprez ad.