Saturday, August 13, 2011
My first full-time job as a prosecutor was in Aurora Municipal Court, starting in January 1982. I managed to exaggerate my experience in Fairplay, convincing the head of the office he was hiring a veteran prosecutor. In truth, I had actually applied to be a public defender, but that office had no openings. Seriously! Me a public defender? Hard to believe I actually wanted to do that at one point. However, I needed a job and city prosecutor was all I could snag.
Aurora Municipal Court even in those days was a busy place. The Court comprised five divisions, only one staffed with a full-time judge, the others shared by part-timers. While I was there a sixth division was added. The City Attorney’s Office contained seven (and then eight) full time attorneys, but was oddly structured. We rotated divisions on a weekly basis. I have no idea who thought this was a good idea, but it had the curious effect of giving none of us ownership of the cases. There are a great many stories from my time as a city prosecutor, but today I want to focus on those I worked with.
I joined an eclectic mix of prosecutors, unlike any group I have worked with before. The head of the office was Clay Douglas, who had come from Alaska. To my knowledge he had never worked as a prosecutor above the municipal court level. This tended to give him very little perspective on how important municipal cases were in the greater scheme of things, a problem I have noted with other municipal prosecutors and judges.
Two of the young prosecutors were Steve Ruddick, who later became a county court judge, and I think now works as a judge in one or more municipal courts; and Mike Armstrong, who we affectionately called “Mikey” like the kid on the Life cereal commercial.
Mike was one of the nicest lawyers I have ever met. He was unceasingly generous, cheerful, intelligent, and unselfish. Obviously, a career in prosecution was not in the cards. Mike was enamored of politics. I think he had started working on political campaigns while in high school. As a liberal Democrat from Arvada he toiled for years on losing campaign after losing campaign. But Mike was persistent. Slowly he rose in the ranks of the Colorado Democratic Party until Bill Clinton’s election in 1992 allowed Mike access to the inner circles of power in Washington. Mike secured a job in the Federal Emergency Management Agency, ultimately achieving some sort of chief deputy position requiring Senate confirmation. It didn’t change him, or it hadn’t the last time I saw him in 2000.
I took Meg on a vacation to New York City and Washington, D.C. This was not her first visit to New York, but the first time she really liked it. (Her first trip was when she was about five and the big city was just too big. She returned calling it “that horrible New York.” There are times now she still calls it that.) I managed to get in touch with Mike and he graciously showed us around Washington. I will never forget seeing the Lincoln Memorial at night, a completely different experience than seeing it in the sunlight and something I would never have done otherwise. With the end of the Clinton administration I wondered what happened to Mike so I googled him. I found that he recently was appointed Chief Executive Officer of the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards I have no idea what an architectural registration board does, but I have no doubt they will be well-served by their chief.
Another prosecutor, Nancy Lee Shavill, was the daughter of one of the justices of the Colorado Supreme Court. Then we had two veterans. One of them, whose name escapes me, was a former district attorney in Texas, either Dallas or Houston. I want to call him Les Nessman because he dressed similarly to that character on WKRP. I think his name actually was Les something. He probably had the most experience in the office, and could have been a good mentor for the younger lawyers, except he was miserable. Clearly he accepted a job as a municipal court prosecutor because he couldn’t find anything else. If I ever knew his reasons for leaving Texas I have forgotten them. Les, or whoever, had the job in perspective, knowing what we were doing was handling not terribly serious cases. The poor guy spent every day wishing he was somewhere else I think. He left not long after I started.
The last lawyer in the office was Len Morrison, a jovial, corpulent old-timer. I have no idea how old Len was in 1982, but I suspect he was pushing 60. I don’t know why Len was working as a city prosecutor in the waning days of his legal career. Perhaps it was just to have something to do. I seem to recall that he had spent his career in some kind of civil practice and had never been a prosecutor. I can clearly see Len sitting at his desk, his hands folded on his ample belly, laughing as he always was. No matter the issue, Len didn’t take the job too seriously. He didn’t have to.
Assuming Len had at least as much experience then as I do now, 30 years, his career started in 1952. That to me seems like truly ancient history, three years before I was born. As legal history, 1952 was before Miranda (1966), before the exclusionary rule was even applied to the states in Mapp v. Ohio (1961), even before Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Think about that, when Len began his career (and it could have been before 1952), “separate but equal” was the law of the land. In most criminal cases there were no motions to suppress because the Bill of Rights did not apply to the states. I have been practicing a long time, but I am sure the changes I have witnessed, although some were huge, cannot compare to those giant decisions.
I try to keep this in perspective when dealing with young lawyers. My career started before many of them were born, or when they were still in diapers. I try to keep in mind that to them I am Len Morrison, who in 1982 seemed like a cross between Methuselah and Bob Hope. (I have put in a link in here because I know many of you have no idea who Bob Hope was.)
Labels: Mike Armstrong
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