From The Denver Post:  A lawyer for a second Colorado death row inmate has filed a lawsuit seeking answers about why a judge who once presided over two of the state’s most high-profile appeals was removed from both.

The lawsuit, filed last week in Denver District Court, accuses state court officials of violating open-records rules in not revealing more about what led to the dismissal of Judge Gerald Rafferty.

Rafferty was fired in April from his contract position in Arapahoe County District Court as he was about to issue a final order in an appeal involving death row inmate Sir Mario Owens. The new lawsuit, though, also raises questions about why Rafferty was removed months earlier from overseeing the appeal of Robert Ray, who was convicted in connection with the same killings as Owens and was also sentenced to death. The two cases are the only ongoing death penalty appeals in Colorado.

“If Judge Rafferty was removed from Mr. Ray’s case for reasons that have anything to do with the content of his finished order in Mr. Owens’ case, this would have as much of an effect on Mr. Ray’s case as it would have on Mr. Owens’ case,” the lawsuit states.

Rafferty presided over the trials for both Owens and Ray, both of whom were found guilty of murder in the 2005 deaths of Javad Marshall-Fields and Vivian Wolfe in Aurora. By law, that meant Rafferty would also oversee the first review of the convictions on appeal.

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