EDITORIAL: Pretrial policies must prioritize public safety
A legislature notoriously lax on law and order has rendered Colorado’s justice system a revolving door, letting lawbreakers loose all too soon to prey upon the public. Plenty are set free even before they have to answer for their charges. Sometimes, dangerous suspects who should be held held in jail are back on the streets on their own recognizance.
It can amount to a get-out-of-jail-free card and, at times, a one-way ticket out of the justice system. And it imperils public safety.
Consider the latest policy codifying such recklessness.
Colorado’s offender-friendly legislature made it easier in 2024 for criminal suspects awaiting trial — but deemed mentally incompetent — to sidestep jail and enroll in a “wraparound” program. It’s supposed to return them to competency. In reality, it can let them off the hook.
As profiled in a Gazette news report last week, the Bridges Wraparound Care Program now being implemented under last year’s legislation theoretically should help rehabilitate mentally incompetent suspects more quickly so they can stand trial or enter a plea on the charges against them. Currently, some incompetent suspects languish in jail while they await in-patient placement in a state mental-health facility.
Yet, participation in the new program requires a suspect’s release on a personal recognizance bond. Given the poor accountability over recognizance releases in general in some of Colorado’s biggest judicial districts, the program almost guarantees more suspects who pose a threat to society will be back on the streets. Some will even be dangerously violent.
Last January, 24-year-old Elijah David Caudill allegedly went on a knifing rampage in downtown Denver, stabbing four random victims. Two died. Not only should he have been in jail at the time — he was on probation with a lengthy, violent criminal record — but he also had been released on his own recognizance only months earlier on other charges.
It turned out Caudill’s “OR” bond had been granted by the court so he could get treatment for mental illness in the interest of restoring him to competency to face those prior charges. He was released under the auspices of the state’s Bridges of Colorado office although not under the new wraparound-care program.
Bridges only coordinates pretrial mental-health services for defendants with psychosis and other mental disorders; it doesn’t provide such care. And it had no legal authority to take custody of, or even supervise, Caudill.
Once released, he was able to walk away and disappear onto Denver’s streets — until he resurfaced, allegedly, to carry out January’s gruesome melee.
Caudill’s was one of several recent, high-profile cases involving dangerous suspects with lengthy records who had been free on bond due to mental-competency issues.
Suspects are rightly regarded as innocent until proven guilty in our justice system, and they are constitutionally protected from being adjudicated on charges if they are not mentally competent to comprehend those charges or the proceedings surrounding them.
But that doesn’t mean they should be released — almost inevitably, to commit more crimes.
Former 18th Judicial District Attorney John Kellner pointed out in a Sunday Perspective in The Gazette last month that another law passed by the legislature in 2024 requires the dismissal of charges if a defendant is deemed incompetent and not restorable to mental competency. Yet, as Kellner also pointed out, there’s no provision in the law at present to link the dismissal of those charges to the involuntary civil commitment of that defendant to a mental health program. Kellner called compellingly for, “legislative reform so that a finding of permanent incompetence triggers automatic admission and care at a mental health facility.” We agree.
That approach not only would assure defendants of the help they need, but it also would assure the public of the safety it deserves.
