By Jeffrey A. Roberts
CFOIC Executive Director
A legislative effort to strengthen Colorado’s two-year-old law requiring the livestreaming of criminal court proceedings ended last week with Gov. Jared Polis’ veto of House Bill 25-1147.
Much of the bill pertained to sentencing disparities between municipal and state courts in Colorado for the same minor crimes, as brought to light by The Denver Post in a series of stories.
In a letter to lawmakers, Polis wrote that the legislation “significantly restricts a municipality’s ability to react to local crime trends in ways that a local government deems most appropriate to improve public safety in their community.”
His letter, however, expressed support for HB 25-1147’s transparency elements.
“I also applaud the sponsors for working to provide more transparency in municipal court by clarifying that proceedings should be open to the public, including through online platforms,” Polis wrote.
The bill would have made it clear that provisions in the 2023 law requiring the livestreaming of criminal court proceedings “supersede” previous statutes, judicial guidance or chief justice directives. That included Chief Justice Directive 23-02, which established rules for the livestreaming of criminal court proceedings but did not — unlike the statute — presume that criminal trials and evidentiary hearings will be livestreamed.
The 2023 law says that all Colorado courts, including municipal courts, “shall make any criminal court proceeding conducted in open court available for remote public viewing and listening in real time, at no cost to the public, through an online platform.” It lists some exceptions such as when “[t]here is a reasonable likelihood remote observation of live proceedings risks compromising the safety of any person; the defendant’s right to a fair trial, including violations of sequestration orders; or the victim’s rights.”
HB 25-1147 would have prohibited courts from adopting blanket rules for limiting the remote observation of proceedings, and it said exceptions had to be “case specific and fact specific” and wouldn’t apply to court proceedings “in which the defendant is in custody.” It also required each municipal court to “ensure all court proceedings, including court proceedings for defendants in custody, are accessible to any member of the public for public observation.”
After the 2023 law went into effect, the Colorado Judicial Department created a website of court proceedings around the state that are livestreamed. But some judges still do not allow livestreaming of their courtrooms, The Post reported in March.
“The newspaper found that of the 374 courtrooms listed on the Colorado Judicial Department’s livestreaming website, 253 — 68% — livestreamed at least once during those point-in-time checks, which The Post did at different times of day,” the story says.
Polis in his veto letter noted that amendments offered during the legislative process by the Colorado Municipal League would have narrowed the bill to its transparency provisions and a clarification that a defendant in municipal court has a right to counsel.
“I would support a bill focused on those provisions, or a bill more narrowly tailored to specific crimes where penalties between the state and local criminal codes are far out of balance,” the governor wrote.
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