Myths and misinformation regarding the prosecution of Cory Voorhis

http://colorado.mediamatters.org/items/200712270001

Summary: Colorado media outlets for more than a year have been reporting on the case of Cory Voorhis, a federal immigration agent accused of illegally obtaining information later used in a 2006 attack ad against then-Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill Ritter. As coverage continues into 2008, Colorado Media Matters is highlighting the numerous false, misleading, or unsubstantiated claims it has documented among news outlets and media figures that are reporting or commenting on the issue.

On September 29, 2006, Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez released a television ad accusing his Democratic opponent, current Gov. Bill Ritter, of helping criminal aliens "avoid deportation" when Ritter was Denver district attorney. The ad cited the cases of five immigrants -- four legal and one illegal -- charged with felonies who were permitted to plea bargain to the lesser Class 5 felony of trespassing on agricultural land. A subsequent Beauprez campaign ad, released on October 10, 2006, featured the case of an illegal immigrant, Carlos Estrada Medina, who reportedly was arrested in Denver in 2001 under the alias Walter Noel Ramo for heroin possession and intent to distribute, but was allowed by the DA's office under Ritter to plead guilty to agricultural trespass in January 2002. According to the ad, authorities later arrested Ramo in California on several charges, including sexual abuse of a minor. Shortly after the later ad aired, Ritter's campaign urged the Colorado Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to determine whether Beauprez's campaign illegally accessed the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database in order to verify that Medina and Ramo were names for the same person. The CBI and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in October 2006 identified U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent Cory Voorhis as the person who allegedly accessed the NCIC to obtain that information. On October 25, 2007, federal authorities charged Voorhis with three misdemeanor counts of misusing his access to the NCIC database.

While the Colorado media continue covering the political aftermath and the prosecution of the Voorhis case, Colorado Media Matters is highlighting the numerous false, misleading, or unsubstantiated claims related to the case that it has documented among local news outlets and media figures. In addition to Peter Boyles, who repeatedly has misled listeners of his 630 KHOW-AM show on the facts of the case and on Ritter's record as district attorney, reporter Karen E. Crummy of The Denver Post, reporter Julie Hayden of KDVR Fox 31, and columnist Chuck Green have repeated numerous falsehoods -- including the claim that "agricultural trespass" plea bargains granted by Ritter's office allowed illegal immigrants to avoid deportation.

Colorado media outlets also have perpetuated the claim that Ritter allowed immigrants charged with felonies to plead down to misdemeanors and the suggestion that the Denver district attorney's office under Mitchell Morrissey also improperly accessed the NCIC database.

1. Agricultural trespass pleas allowed illegal immigrants to avoid deportation

Before the investigation into Voorhis' alleged illegal use of the NCIC database, the Post echoed the Beauprez campaign's false accusation that Ritter's Denver district attorney's office allowed legal and illegal immigrants to avoid deportation by plea bargaining down to agricultural trespass:

On October 1, 2006, Crummy reported in the Post that the "Denver district attorney's office under gubernatorial candidate Bill Ritter approved plea bargains that prevented the deportation of illegal and legal immigrants charged with drug, assault and other crimes."
On October 3, 2006 (accessed through the Nexis database), reporting on U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo's (R-CO) request to "Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper [D] to adopt tougher police policies when it comes to dealing with suspected illegal immigrants," the Post stated: "The request came in response to revelations that former Denver District Attorney Bill Ritter, now a Democratic gubernatorial candidate, allowed plea bargains with illegal and legal immigrants that let suspects avoid deportation."
Additionally, on October 2, 2006, as Colorado Media Matters noted, Boyles further obscured the matter by reading the October 1, 2006, Post article on the air, but changing the first sentence to omit the fact that Ritter's office had used the agricultural-trespass charge for legal as well as illegal immigrants. According to Boyles' reading of the article, Ritter stood accused of granting the agricultural trespass plea bargain only to illegal immigrants.

In fact, as Colorado Media Matters repeatedly has noted, while the "agricultural trespass" plea deals Ritter's office approved might have helped legal immigrants avoid deportation, illegal immigrants are subject to deportation by federal officials regardless of any state or local pleas to which they agree, according to U.S. law.

Ritter's campaign repeatedly clarified before the November 7, 2006, election that aliens unlawfully present in the United States are always subject to deportation under U.S. law. As the Rocky Mountain News reported on June 11, 2006, "unlawful presence" in the United States is in and of itself a deportable offense: "The most common charge against those caught without authorization in the U.S. is 'unlawful presence,' a civil offense. The penalty is removal, and an immigrant can be detained in the meantime."

Colorado Media Matters also noted that an October 12, 2006, News article (accessed through Nexis) reported Ritter's defense against the suggestion that the pleas helped illegal immigrants avoid deportation:

Ritter and the district attorney's office have said the plea generally involved legal immigrants with green cards or visas and allowed them to separately plead their case against deportation before federal immigration officials. The plea did nothing to help illegal immigrants, Ritter said.

"An illegal immigrant is deportable whether they plead guilty to this felony or any other crime, even misdemeanors, even petty offenses," Ritter said. "It (the plea) was not used to preserve an arrangement where they could stay in the country."

Once Voorhis was charged in late October 2007 and the case was back in the news, several Colorado media outlets resumed repeating the false assertion that agricultural trespass pleas helped illegal immigrants avoid deportation:

An October 26 Post article by Crummy about the filing of criminal charges against Voorhis reported that, as Denver district attorney, Ritter approved "several plea bargains ... that prevented the deportation of illegal and legal immigrants charged with drug, assault and other crimes."
On October 29, discussing Voorhis' case, Boyles allowed Mike McGarry, who introduced himself as founder and former director of the Colorado Alliance for Immigration Reform (CAIR), to claim that "Ritter during his DA-ship purposely pled down these cases so that they weren't deportable." McGarry further asserted, "Well, now some people have argued in Ritter's behalf that while these -- of the illegals that were involved in these cases, that they were already subject to deportation, so he didn't mitigate or lessen their chances of deportation. But that's not true."
Discussing the case again on his November 14 show, Boyles said that, as Denver district attorney, Ritter approved agricultural trespass plea bargains "that prevented deportations of illegals":
BOYLES: During his job or his tenure as Denver DA, he did plea bargains that prevented deportations of illegals and others charged with drugs, assault, and other crimes 152 times between '98 and 2004. These are illegals, folks.

While discussing Voorhis' case as a guest on Boyles' November 29 show, Fox 31's Hayden asserted:
HAYDEN: [T]his is a fairly common belief held in the ICE office, is my understanding, that the local prosecutors -- and it wasn't just Ritter's office, this was pretty common -- pled these crimes down to misdemeanors so that they weren't deportable offenses. And then when ICE tries to deal with these guys later on, they have no grounds for deporting 'em. And they said, so what happens is, is these dangerous people end up getting left in the country.

Stating that Republican state legislators "are considering asking a federal grand jury to look into the prosecution" of Voorhis, the Post's Crummy inaccurately reported on December 5 that "Voorhis used NCIC to track down the aliases of an illegal immigrant who had been charged with heroin possession while Gov. Bill Ritter was the Denver district attorney, but was allowed to plead guilty to agricultural trespassing -- an offense that doesn't mandate deportation."
2. Beauprez's ad highlighted only cases of illegal aliens who received plea bargains from Ritter's office

Although the Colorado media accurately reported in October 2006 that Beauprez's first attack ad cited criminal cases in which four legal immigrants and one illegal immigrant were allowed to plea bargain to agricultural trespass during Ritter's tenure as Denver district attorney, Boyles and the Post have since inaccurately stated that the September 29, 2006, ad cited only cases of illegal immigrants:

On his October 29, 2007, show, Boyles stated that "well over a year ago -- the first of a series of five ads" by Beauprez's campaign "appear[ed] attacking Ritter's record as Denver DA." Boyles went on to say, "First ad is on the shocking, five shocking plea deals, criminal cases involving illegals."
Similarly, on his November 29, 2007, show, Boyles further embellished the falsehood by claiming that Ritter granted "152 plea bargains to illegal aliens, criminals." Boyles said, "If you look at the [court] documents, Bill Ritter is the victim. How the hell, a guy who gives 152 plea bargains to illegal aliens, criminals, is now a victim?"
A December 4, 2007, Post article (updated December 5) by Crummy about the investigation into Voorhis' use of the NCIC database reported that, before the 2006 election, "information obtained by immigration agent Cory Voorhis was eventually used by Bob Beauprez's gubernatorial campaign in a series of ads questioning plea agreements Bill Ritter's office made with illegal immigrants when he was Denver's DA."
However, as the News (accessed through Nexis) reported on September 30, 2006, after the release of Beauprez's first ad citing the plea bargains, "Bob Beauprez unleashed a new attack on Bill Ritter's record as Denver district attorney late Friday, accusing him of giving five Hispanic immigrants who committed felonies plea bargains that helped them avoid deportation." The article also noted, "Four of the five felons were here legally" and quoted Ritter as saying that Beauprez was "being terribly irresponsible in lumping legal immigrants with illegal immigrants" in his attack ads. According to the News:

Four of the five cases highlighted by the Beauprez campaign involved legal immigrants from Latin America. Previously, Beauprez has chosen to focus on illegal immigration as an issue, and this marks the first time he has singled out legal immigrants as "alien felons."

3. Ritter participated in Denver's so-called "sanctuary" policy

Some Colorado media figures have continued asserting that by allowing illegal immigrants to plead to agricultural trespass, Ritter supported Denver's so-called "sanctuary" policy to protect illegal immigrants. In fact, days after Beauprez's September 29, 2006, ad first aired, Boyles proclaimed Ritter's plea bargains part of a sanctuary policy -- a policy Boyles repeatedly insists Denver has instituted. News media critic and Independence Institute research director Dave Kopel similarly claimed on the October 20, 2006, broadcast of KBDI Channel 12's Colorado Inside Out that by allowing illegal immigrants to plea bargain, Ritter "has run, in effect, a sanctuary city."

However, as Colorado Media Matters has noted repeatedly, Denver is not a sanctuary city, according to sources including ICE and the Congressional Research Service (CRS).

Still, several media figures discussing the Voorhis case continue to accuse Ritter of having participated in a "sanctuary" policy favoring illegal immigrants in Denver:

On November 14, 2007, Boyles said to a caller:
BOYLES: You have a governor that -- look, take it back in time. Mayor Webb and, when Butch Montoya's manager of safety, Denver becomes sanctuary. Now, they'll deny it till the cows come home, but -- and so at that time Bill Ritter is also the district attorney. These [plea] deals are being made under the eyes or under the nose of the Denver citizenry.

Touting the "several hours of on-air discussion and off-air investigation" that Boyles purportedly conducted regarding the Voorhis case, Green in a November 28, 2007, column in The Pueblo Chieftain and on the Aurora Sentinel website repeated the unsubstantiated claim that in providing information related to Ritter's January 2002 plea agreement in Ramo's case, Voorhis "was exposing" a purported "Ritter policy of protecting illegal immigrants who had committed criminal offenses in Denver."
In a December 5, 2007, Aurora Sentinel online column, Green suggested that the records Voorhis obtained from the NCIC database indicated that prosecutorial decisions Ritter's office made while he was DA represented a " 'sanctuary' policy" that protected illegal immigrant defendants from deportation:
What's most disturbing is that the agent's actions during the campaign were based on a sincere attempt to show the deception Ritter was imposing on voters interested in his "sanctuary" policy regarding illegals. The facts exposed by the agent contradicted Ritter's insistence that he was not protecting criminals.

4. Ritter allowed criminals charged with felonies to plead to a misdemeanor

Another falsehood generated by the Beauprez campaign and uncritically repeated in the Colorado media is the claim that the agricultural trespass plea bargain allowed criminals charged with felonies to plead guilty to a misdemeanor. On the same day he released his first attack ad regarding Ritter's record of plea bargaining legal and illegal immigrants, nationally syndicated radio host Hugh Hewitt interviewed Beauprez. During the September 29, 2006, interview, Hewitt asserted:

HEWITT: [A]s district attorney for Denver, Mr. Ritter plea bargained more than 190 suspected felons to a very obscure charge of trespass on agricultural land. They were aliens, illegal and legal. And as a result of that plea bargain, they were not deported. They weren't tried. They were simply -- they pled to a misdemeanor, agricultural -- (laughing). I just don't understand that at all, Bob Beauprez. But it is as though he had an assembly line there, a little office where "get-out-of-deportation-free" cards were issued.

BEAUPREZ: You got it.

However, the October 1, 2006, Post article reported in a section titled "Taking the felony hit" that Denver immigration attorney Jeff Joseph described the plea as "the felony agricultural trespass charge." The News' October 12, 2006, article similarly described the charge as "felony farm trespassing," and on September 30, 2006, the News had quoted Ritter defending the plea bargains:

"We would do things to ensure they had a felony conviction even when there were serious evidentiary problems," Ritter said. "They were still pleading to felonies -- they're not misdemeanors."

As Colorado Media Matters has noted, Colorado Revised Statute 18-4-504 (C.R.S. § 18-4-504) states that "[a] person commits the crime of third degree criminal trespass if such person unlawfully enters or remains in or upon premises of another" and that third degree criminal trespass "is a class 5 felony if the person trespasses on premises so classified as agricultural land with the intent to commit a felony thereon."

Despite evidence to the contrary, on Boyles' November 29, 2007, show, Fox 31's Hayden asserted that it is a "fairly common belief held in the ICE office" that Ritter, as Denver district attorney, and other "local prosecutors" pled "crimes down to misdemeanors so that they weren't deportable offenses" for illegal immigrants.

5. Ritter is "going after" Voorhis

In his analysis of the case, Boyles has stated that Voorhis is being prosecuted because Ritter is "going after" him or "trying to get even":

Referring to the governor as "Tax Ritter," Boyles declared on November 8, 2007, "Mind you, it's Tax that's going after Voorhis. Tax's guys are going after Voorhis." Later, Boyles called the charges against Voorhis "political prosecution."
On November 14, 2007, Boyles asserted, "This is Ritter, you know, trying to get even for what was done to him during this campaign."
However, as Colorado Media Matters has noted, the investigation and prosecution have taken place outside of Ritter's authority. While then-gubernatorial candidate Ritter in fall 2006 requested that the CBI investigate how Beauprez's campaign obtained specific information about the case of Ramo, "[t]he investigation was conducted by the FBI, the ICE Office of Professional Responsibility and the Colorado Bureau of Investigation," according to an Associated Press article published October 25, 2007, in the Post. And, contrary to Boyles' assertion, the Post further reported that the probe "was placed under the control of John Green, the acting U.S. attorney for Wyoming, to avoid any conflicts of interest involving Voorhis and federal prosecutors in Denver."

Similarly, on October 28, 2006, the News (accessed through Nexis) reported, "The legal oversight of the case was moved from Colorado's U.S. Attorney's Office to its counterpart in Wyoming, because the investigation has focused on a federal immigration agent who worked on cases handled by federal prosecutors in Denver, according to sources familiar with the transfer."

6. Denver's DA office also improperly accessed the NCIC database

Since Voorhis' attorneys filed a motion in early November 2007 to dismiss the case against their client as "selective prosecution," citing two other instances -- including one involving an employee at the Denver district attorney's office -- in which the NCIC database was accessed for the same information around the same time Voorhis allegedly misused it, some in the media have suggested that the Denver DA office also improperly accessed the NCIC database.

Boyles, for example, on November 8, 2007, claimed that the Denver district attorney's office under Ritter improperly accessed the NCIC database, asserting that "the exact same thing that he [Voorhis] is being prosecuted for was done in the same time period by an employee in the Denver DA's office." Boyles then added, "Gee, who was DA at the time? That's right -- the governor, 'Tax' Ritter." Later Boyles asserted, "But here, right under the eyes of "Both-Ways" Bill Ritter, one of his own guys was doing it as well. That person has not been prosecuted or charged."

In fact, as the Post reported on the same day, Voorhis allegedly accessed the confidential information for Beauprez's campaign in 2006 and the anti-Ritter ad "ran in late September 2006." Ritter, however, served as Denver district attorney from 1992-2004, which contradicts Boyles' claim that an employee in Ritter's DA office improperly accessed the NCIC database "in the same time period" as Voorhis did.

The Post further noted that according to records cited by Voorhis' attorneys, NCIC information allegedly obtained by an employee of the Denver district attorney's office was "given to District Attorney Mitch Morrissey," who was in charge of the office at the time. According to the Post:

A week after the ad first ran, a "senior, long-time" Denver deputy district attorney asked an employee to access information about the man in the ad, according to federal and state records cited by Voorhis' attorneys.

The employee could not find the information in the Colorado database, so NCIC "had to have been accessed in order to get information," according to her statement to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation cited in Voorhis' motion.

The NCIC information was then printed by the employee and given to District Attorney Mitch Morrissey for "informational purposes," she said.

Whether that information was given to Ritter, who was Morrissey's predecessor, or his campaign, "I don't know," said Lynn Kimbrough, spokeswoman for the DA's office.

After repeating several times during the November 8, 2007, broadcast the falsehood that an employee in Ritter's DA office misused the NCIC database, Boyles finally acknowledged in the third hour of his show that the alleged infraction took place under Morrissey's office. Boyles referred to Morrissey as "tied at the hip to Tax Ritter":

BOYLES: But here we found out October the 12th, 2006, that Denver DA's employ -- someone in Morrissey's office, who, of course, is tied at the hip to Tax Ritter, and no one said anything about these guys. This is beauty. And Lynn Kimbrough said -- Kimbrough, who, you know, that's her job to spin the story: "Oh no, it's not the same." Oh yes, it is.

The Office of the Denver District Attorney on December 4, 2007, posted an entry on the "Setting the Record Straight" page of its website to correct what it termed "a number of statements that are inaccurate or misleading" in the December 4 Post article. The Post reported that "[t]he Denver district attorney's office is under increased scrutiny" because of investigations into unauthorized access of a crime database. On December 5, 2007, the Post published a correction in its print edition and corrected the online version of the article to remove a sub-headline that the district attorney's office had stated was "completely false," and noted the correction at the bottom of the online article.

The district attorney's office took issue with the assertion in the sub-headline of the original Post article that the district attorney's office was not authorized to obtain the information, and posted the following entry on its website:

The sub-headline "Investigators want to find out why it got, without authorization, crime data wrongfully obtained earlier" is completely false.
The Denver DA's Office was authorized to access NCIC and did so in the normal course of business for a legitimate law enforcement purpose.

The DA's office also asserted on its "Setting the Record Straight" page on November 21, 2007, that "[a]ccess to the NCIC database was done in the normal course of business, by authorized personnel, to carry out the responsibilities of the Denver District Attorney, including providing information to the media, the campaigns, and the public that is neither confidential nor privileged. This would be the same public information routinely provided upon request in similar cases."

The correction the Post added December 5 to the online version of the article stated:

This article has been corrected in this online archive. Originally, due to an editing error, a headline indicated that representatives of the Denver district attorney's office were not authorized to access the National Crime Information Center database. In fact, they are authorized. [italics in original]

The correction in the print edition read:

Representatives of the Denver district attorney's office are authorized to access the National Crime Information Center database. Because of an editing error, a headline Tuesday on Page 1B said otherwise.

However, referring to the Post's December 4 article, Green asserted in his December 5, 2007, Aurora Sentinel online column that, similar to Voorhis, the Office of the Denver District Attorney had had "improper access to the files."

7. The Ritter campaign obtained confidential information via the NCIC database

In the same column, Green made the unsubstantiated accusation that the Ritter campaign had misused the NCIC database:

But now it appears that the Ritter campaign similarly used the data bank to get information to rebut the Beauprez ad, but no one in the Denver DA's office is being prosecuted for improper access to the files.

Green did not address the assertion by the Denver DA's office, stated on its "Setting the Record Straight" Web page, that it did not release confidential information:

The [December 4 Post] article states, "Denver DA communications director Lynn Kimbrough said she most likely notified the Ritter campaign of the information on NCIC they found... ".
What Ms. Kimbrough has said (and what has been posted on this website since November 21, 2007), is that she returned calls providing confirmation that a defendant by the name of Walter Ramo and a defendant by the name of Carlos Estrada-Medina were in fact the same person and that she provided additional detail about the facts of the Ramo case, which was prosecuted by the Denver DA's Office in 2001. No confidential or privileged information was released.

—C.H.