April 14, 2020 03:08 PM UTC

George Brauchler is Bad at His (Taxpayer-Funded) Job

• 2 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

Republican George Brauchler represents Arapahoe County and parts of a few other counties as the District Attorney in the 18th Judicial District. Brauchler failed at two statewide campaigns in 2018 — first for Governor, then for Attorney General — and is term-limited in 2020. In recent months Brauchler has been prepping for a post-government career with a bi-weekly column in the Denver Post and a radio show of some sort, but it sure would be nice if he would pay more attention to his actual full-time job.

As The Denver Post reports:

A Colorado man convicted of robbery who won a court reversal and was awaiting a new trial will now have the charges dismissed because his right to a speedy trial has been violated.

The Colorado Supreme Court ruled on Monday that criminal charges against Edward Kevin DeGreat — who remained in prison for about 18 months while awaiting a new trial after his earlier convictions were reversed — must now be dismissed with prejudice…

…The office of District Attorney George Brauchler was prosecutor in the case. [Pols emphasis]

Apparently a guy who was convicted of robbery ended up skating on those charges because Brauchler’s office failed to give him a speedy trial, as is guaranteed in the constitution. This is not a minor detail that anybody could have missed. It is also not a rare occurrence — there has been a notable pattern of ineptitude when it comes to Brauchler’s office.

Brauchler has lost high-profile cases with the State Supreme Court on legal interpretation matters, but more distressingly, his office has botched the prosecution of a man who killed a State Trooper in 2016; a sheriff’s deputy who created and solicited child pornography; and multiple attempts to prosecute corrupt former El Paso County Sheriff “Shirtless” Terry Maketa. In 2015, Brauchler famously failed in his bid to get a death sentence for the man convicted in the Aurora Theater shootings.

Brauchler kinda sucks at politics, which is fine; some public servants are better administrators/managers than they are politicians. But Brauchler is not one of those people, either. As we wrote in September 2018:

The point is that George Brauchler is wrong a lot, and loses. A lot.

We understand that in every job, sometimes shit just happens. Unfortunately for the people of Judicial District 18, shit seems to happen a lot more frequently when Brauchler is in charge.