Glendale Cherry Creek Chronicle editorial promoted falsehoods about Voorhis case

Summary: In an editorial, the Glendale Cherry Creek Chronicle made misleading statements about the prosecution of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Cory Voorhis, and in doing so disparaged the prosecutorial record of Gov. Bill Ritter (D). Colorado Media Matters repeatedly has debunked claims that plea agreements Ritter granted as Denver district attorney allowed illegal immigrants to avoid deportation and that his office improperly accessed a national crime database, as Voorhis is charged with doing.

In a January editorial in its online edition, the Glendale Cherry Creek Chronicle made several false or misleading statements regarding the prosecution of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent Cory Voorhis. The Colorado Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) identified Voorhis as the person who allegedly accessed the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database to obtain information that the gubernatorial campaign of then-U.S. Rep. Bob Beauprez (R) used in an October 2006 television ad attacking the record of his Democratic opponent, current Gov. Bill Ritter, as Denver district attorney.

After stating that "Voorhis' alleged crime was to reveal the utter hypocrisy of Denver DA (now Governor) Bill Ritter's claim that he was a strong prosecutor when illegal aliens committed crimes in Denver," the Chronicle went on to repeat two of the false, misleading, or unsubstantiated claims related to the case that Colorado Media Matters has previously documented.

The editorial followed a December 15, 2007, charity fundraising event called "Bikers For the Brave," at which Voorhis took the stage.

From the January editorial "The Nifonging of Cory Voorhis," published online by the Glendale Cherry Creek Chronicle:

Of course the poster boy for prosecutorial misconduct is Durham, North Carolina, District Attorney Mike Nifong, who during 2007 attempted to prosecute for rape three Duke lacrosse players that he knew were innocent of an event that never occurred. He eventually was forced to resign from office, was disbarred and even served a day in jail for his actions as a district attorney. A new verb entered the American lexicon -- to "nifong." It means to wrongfully and disreputably prosecute an individual.

Many individuals at the Bikers for the Brave event expressed the belief that Voorhis is being "nifonged" by acting U.S. Attorney Johnny Green. Voorhis' alleged crime was to reveal the utter hypocrisy of Denver DA (now Governor) Bill Ritter's claim that he was a strong prosecutor when illegal aliens committed crimes in Denver. Ritter's record was, in fact, disgraceful.

In fact, federal authorities charged Voorhis on October 25, 2007, with three misdemeanor counts of misusing his access to the NCIC database after the Beauprez campaign released a pair of attack ads during the 2006 gubernatorial race. One accused Ritter of helping criminal aliens "avoid deportation" when Ritter was Denver district attorney by citing 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 Ritter's DA office to plead guilty to agricultural trespass in January 2002.

Shortly after the second ad aired, Ritter's campaign urged CBI to determine whether Beauprez's campaign illegally accessed the NCIC database in order to verify that Medina and Ramo were names for the same person.

After suggesting that Voorhis had not allegedly committed a serious crime, the Chronicle claimed that a plea bargain granted by Ritter's office to Medina "allowed him to stay in the United States":

Voorhis demonstrated that Ritter would grant plea bargains to criminal illegal aliens, such as Carlos Estrada Medina, who was charged with the sale of heroin, and plead to "agricultural trespass" which allowed him to stay in the United States. As a result, Medina moved to California, where he was later charged with a sex related crime against a minor.

Contrary to the Chronicle's claim that plea bargains granted by Ritter's office allowed illegal aliens like Medina to stay in the United States, Colorado Media Matters repeatedly has pointed out that 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. Such a plea deal might have helped a legal immigrant avoid deportation, but it could not have conferred such a benefit on an illegal immigrant such as Medina.

Moreover, 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."

The Chronicle went on to repeat a claim it attributed to Denver Post reporter Karen Crummy: that "various members of Ritter's staff were involved in the same type of accessing" as Voorhis allegedly had been:

As a result of his revealing what should be public information, Voorhis has been indicted by Johnny Green on three charges of unlawful accessing of the National Crime Information Center database. Denver Post reporter Karen Crummy investigated and found that various members of Ritter's staff were involved in the same type of accessing. The U.S. Attorney's office then unconvincingly, publicly claimed that Ritter's staff wasn't indicted because they had a differing motive (responding to charges as opposed to revealing the truth). Others have claimed that a prosecutor not prosecuting prosecutors is in reality little more than a type of honor among thieves.

In fact, as the Post reported in a November 8, 2007, article by Crummy, 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, contradicting the claim that members of Ritter's staff were involved "in the same type of accessing" as Voorhis.

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 [to dismiss the case].

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.

Colorado Media Matters repeatedly has noted instances in which Boyles has made misrepresentations regarding the Voorhis case. As the Rocky Mountain News' Penny Parker noted in a November 29, 2007, column, Boyles was an organizer of the Biker's For the Brave event. Boyles also writes a column for the monthly Chronicle, with an online version appearing on the Chronicle website as "The Peter Boyles Blog."

—E.B.