The Colorado Springs Independent has a detailed look at El Paso County, Colorado’s fast track domestic violence program.
After someone accused of domestic violence is arrested, he or she is held at least one night without bond. The accused is then offered a choice by a district attorney — accept a plea bargain or face spending a lot of time in jail if the case goes to trial. The idea is to pressure the defendant into accepting a plea bargain within 24 to 48 hours of arrest.
The problem is that at no point are defense attorneys or public defenders involved in the process. Since the accused has been locked up overnight, he or she has not had an opportunity to call a lawyer, and no public defenders or defense attorneys are parent when the plea bargain offer is made.
The Colorado Springs Independent article quotes from a number of critics of the program who believe the inability to post bond and the lack of any sort of advocate for the accused renders the entire program an unconstitutional violation of the defendant’s right to counsel.
The article notes that several people who accepted plea bargains under this procedure later had judges withdraw their please — including one man who successfully challenged his plea bargain on the grounds that it had been coerced.
An interesting side bar is that while the domestic violence advocates in the article don’t seem to object to the questionable constitutional nature of the proceedings, they are concerned about another fact — 24 percent of the defendants who go through this system are women.
The Colorado Springs Independent quotes local domestic violence activist Cari Davis as saying that something must be wrong since nationwide only 5 percent of the perpetrators of domestic violence are women. In fact, numerous studies show that men and women are roughly equally likely to engage in domestic violence. The difference in Colorado is likely laws requiring arrest of those accused of domestic violence. Rather than women being disproportionately overrepresented in domestic violence arrests in Colorado, it is more likely that women are disproportionately underrepresented in domestic violence arrests in states that give police officers discretion on whether or not to arrest in domestic violence cases.
Source:
Railroaded for domestic-violence defendants, El Paso County?s ?fast track? may not always lead to justice. Terje Langeland, Colorado Springs Independent, August 15-21, 2002.