Case Description
A defendant sought to challenge for cause the selection as a juror of an assistant attorney general in the Colorado attorney general’s office. Under Colorado law, “a trial court is therefore statutorily required to sustain a proper challenge for cause to a prospective juror who is a compensated employee of a public law enforcement agency.” The supreme court held that the attorney general’s office was such an agency because 1) it had been specifically included in a number of different statutory provisions defining the term “law enforcement agency; and 2) the court had treated the office of the state attorney general as an archetype of a “law enforcement agency” in past cases. The court held, “Where the prospective juror’s employer in this case had been both expressly identified as a law enforcement agency by statute and had been expressly acknowledged by this court in published opinions as a law enforcement agency, the defendant clearly had no obligation to produce additional evidence in support of his challenge.”