Q&A with Michael Martinez and Christopher Baumann | Denver’s past and present chief judges

In September, there was a changing-of-the-guard in the trial court for Colorado’s Second Judicial District — meaning Denver. Chief Judge Michael A. Martinez retired after more than two decades on the bench and approximately eight years as the head of the court. Christopher J. Baumann, a relative newcomer with five years’ experience on the trial court, succeeded Martinez as chief judge for one of the state’s most populous jurisdictions.

Colorado Politics spoke to both men about the changes they have seen to the court, most notably during the COVID-19 pandemic.

FAST FACTS

• Michael A. Martinez was a 2000 appointee of Gov. Bill Owens, and prior to that was a magistrate in Denver and in the 17th Judicial District of Adams and Broomfield counties
• He worked in the private sector and in government before becoming a judge, including at the Denver City Attorney’s Office and the Regional Transportation District
• Christopher J. Baumann is a 2017 appointee of Gov. John Hickenlooper who previously was head of the Denver office for the state public defender
• Earlier in his career, Baumann worked for the Colorado Attorney General’s Office and the Louisiana Supreme Court

Colorado Politics: There are 22 judicial districts in Colorado covering multiple counties, sometimes a single county. Denver is, obviously, its own judicial district. Can you walk me through how Denver District Court differs from the district courts in the rest of Colorado?

Michael Martinez: The Second Judicial District is unique from any other district in the state because it is home to the equivalent of four separate, standalone, autonomous courts. A judicial district anywhere else in the state is comprised mostly of combined courts — district court and county court. In our district, it’s comprised of Denver District Court, Denver Juvenile Court, Denver Probate Court and Denver County Court.

It also makes it uniquely challenging in times like a pandemic to coordinate and manage because you want to make sure that everyone is involved in the decision-making.

CP: It’s also my understanding there are some matters that are heard in Denver District Court that are not able to filed elsewhere, is that right? Like reviews of agency decisions?

MM: There are certain statutory schemes that provide that judicial review is accomplished strictly in the Denver District Court. Yes, it is a unique opportunity to preside over some unique challenges that other districts don’t often see.

CP: And challenges that are necessarily more political in nature?

MM: They raise oftentimes political or interesting questions. Years ago I had a case involving implementation by a local school board of a school voucher program.

Christopher Baumann: It does seem like we get our fair share of (election) cases. I did some of those as well a handful of years ago in the pandemic and some candidates for U.S. Senate were trying to get on the ballot. I think those come to us in Denver, so we are uniquely situated. With the election coming up, I think we’ve been handling some already.

CP: There has been quite a bit of turnover in Denver District Court over the past couple of years. Do you know how many new judges you’ve gotten since 2019?

MM: There’s 27 district judges and Gov. Jared Polis has appointed 14 of them.

CP: When you have that many brand new judges coming in within a short time, how does it affect court operations? In particular, what’s the effect on people whose cases need to be heard?

CB: For new judges on the bench, any case that is coming into their courtroom that is not in an area of law they may have practiced as an attorney creates a lot of need for research and collaboration with your colleagues that are more familiar. It certainly creates more engagement on the judge’s end. I would like to think it doesn’t affect the litigants themselves. From the litigants’ viewpoint, hopefully they don’t feel the difference.

Frankly, I think there’s many litigants who don’t know how long the judge has been on the bench. I’ve been on the bench just under five years. I would hope the litigant doesn’t perceive a difference in how we’re handling the case.

MM: The court has been very proactive for planning and anticipating for this turnover. The court, starting with the leadership at the Supreme Court, recognized some years ago that we were starting to see people come to the end of their tenure. They created a very robust judicial education program and during my tenure as chief, we created this onboarding process for all the new judges coming in to try to acclimate them as quickly as possible.

There is a substantial learning curve for most people coming into the job. The Second JD is unique because this court also rotates its judges among the three primary subject matter areas: criminal cases, domestic relations/family cases and civil cases. Candidly, once the new judges come into a new area, all of us would have a re-acclimation period where they flush the stuff they were working with before and recalibrate their focus.

CP: Judge Baumann, having been through that re-acclimation period most recently, which of those three areas was the hardest for you?

CB: Probably the biggest challenge for me was civil. My professional background was mostly criminal. Domestic was a lot of hearings and in-court time and I was very comfortable being in the courtroom from my prior employment. The scope of issues in domestic were pretty focused.

Civil was the most challenging for me because the breadth of different issues that come before a civil judge is pretty extraordinary. Everything in between (criminal and domestic relations) is a civil matter. You can be a judge with a medical malpractice background or a personal injury background. But when you start dealing with contract disputes or business disputes, that may be an area you’ve never experienced.

CP: Other than people reaching the mandatory retirement age, is there a reason why so many judges have stepped down in the last four years?

MM: Individuals have individual circumstances that kind of lead them to the bench and then lead them to depart. Certainly there are occasions where judging is very difficult. During the course of the pandemic, as the leader of our district, I spent a lot of time on the phone and on my computer working, meeting, drafting policies, and it aged me. I’m nowhere near — for what it’s worth — the mandatory retirement age.

But after 28 years of wearing a robe and the weight of being a judge, it was the perfect time for me to move on. I saw a lot of people changing their mind about being involved in any kind of employment because of this unique circumstance of the pandemic.

One of our brightest young judges who had been a magistrate in another judicial district was appointed in our court, and she experienced the pandemic unlike anyone else that I was aware of. She just decided she didn’t want to stay in the position and she left. She was doing a great job and was healthy and all those things, but it recalibrates your priorities.

CP: So, we heard during the pandemic that the increase in virtual proceedings increased access to justice for litigants and attorneys. Did the judges uniformly view it as a good thing or did it cause more headaches behind the scenes?

MM: All of those things. We had no reference point to move from, so everybody rolled up their sleeves and we did all we could to meet our constitutional responsibility. I don’t know there was uniformity or everyone felt the same way about it, but I do know folks worked collaboratively to ensure we did the work we needed to do. My experience is my colleagues in Denver were excited to learn new tools.

CB: Yeah, we were put in a position where we really didn’t have much choice. The whole world changed and the judiciary changed too. I didn’t Zoom before, I never even FaceTimed. A lot of these things were foreign to us. We transitioned, I think, to trying to be in person but we still do things virtually out of convenience for parties and in particular, people in criminal cases we’re transporting around the state for very quick court appearances.

CP: One final question on the turnover issue: Are you aware of any judges who left because of misconduct or impending judicial discipline?

MM: No. The chief judge is the administrative leader for the district. And while the chief judge is a constitutional co-equal with the judges they work with, they do have administrative authority. And one of the things they are responsible for is meeting with the judicial performance commissions to discuss the performance of judges in their district.

One of the things I thought was really important in the job of chief judge is — during the survey process we try to get people who have knowledge of the judge’s performance to respond to the survey. The chief also receives every evaluation of judges who are up for retention. I would go and meet with the commission and answer specific questions about the individual judges. I would also meet with the judges if they wished and reviewed their evaluations and survey results to give feedback that way. 

Because I did those things, I wasn’t aware of any judges having issues like that.

CP: As chief judges, you’re privy to more information about how trial judges are doing their jobs than the average voter is. Do you think there’s a way, in theory or in practice, to have voters know more of what you know when they’re making decisions whether to retain judges?

MM: Chief judges will definitely give the commission enough information for them to use in crafting an assessment of how judges are doing. I always took it as an opportunity to give the commission a view of what it looks like from the bench — what are the circumstances they are dealing with.

For example, at one point we had a staffing shortage where not all judges had law clerks and we were not able to maintain continuity of the staffing. So I would share that with the commission and help them understand how that would be impactful to individual judges’ ability to perform their functions. So by doing that, the commission would have that information and go to individual judges and ask them, “How did you manage these particular circumstances,” knowing I had given them that filter.

CB: The work that we’re doing is all public. To the extent people are wondering what we’re doing, we put everything out there either in open court or written orders. I know the average voter is not gonna take the time and effort to look into all that we’re doing, but that’s why we have a commission. We put a lot of faith in our commission members to give us a fair assessment.

MM: They can send out thousands of survey invitations and some of our judges and some of our judges occasionally are judged by less than 10 survey responses. There’s gotta be a way out there to allow the commission members to get more information from the public and the bar associations about the judges and how they perform. Candidly, they’re stuck with the information they receive, but if you’re not getting these survey results, it can be challenging.

We have to have the people participating in their government.

CP: Do you think paying people, perhaps $20, to fill out those surveys would be an incentive?

MM: Sometimes. Anything that would pique their interest, I think, would be a good idea.

CP: Judge Baumann, do you have any initiatives as chief judge that you’d like to implement within the next five years or so?

CB: That exact question got asked to me by my fellow judges when the position came open and got asked to me when I was meeting with the folks over at the Supreme Court. I’ll tell you what I told them: I didn’t come into this position with necessarily an agenda of “this is what we’re doing, this is what we’re changing.”

I have always approached new leadership positions with a mind towards getting a good sense of what’s going on. Because when you’re in the chief judge chair, there’s a lot going on that other people don’t know about. Part of assuming a leadership position is you think before you do, and you have to gather information.

I think one of the biggest challenges right now is the heightened level of distrust in all government institutions, including the judiciary, among the public we serve. The general feeling in my view is one of suspicion and cynicism of what we’re doing.

Coming in for this position, it was made very clear to me that it’s a difficult environment to be operating within right now, and we, as a group and as chief judge, recognize that. But trying to create confidence and maintain confidence in the system by the work we do and the decisions we make — that’s at the top of my agenda right now. Encouraging and supporting our judges as they operate within this environment, reminding them that disagreement and public criticism is part of our job.

That’s OK, that’s to be expected and all of us have signed up for it.