Judge Juan Villaseñor's Two-Month Deliberation Culminating In Loveland's "Parade Of Horribles"
Part IV of an ongoing series
The dynamics are difficult to capture — the dynamics of an independent journalist, represented by no attorney, taking on powerful city attorneys, in both Loveland and Fort Collins, Colorado — and winning.
Quoting Stacy Lynne:
Delynn Coldiron, as the City Clerk, is considered the official records custodian, and that’s why she was named as a defendant. Sergeant Bryan Bartnes is the internal affairs sergeant for Loveland Police Department. He’s considered the official records custodian for the police department and that’s why he was named as a defendant. One thing that I wanted to prove through this show-cause hearing was that "records custodians" are often not the decision-makers when it comes to public records releases or denials, but the "records custodians" are those held responsible if the records cases go to court. The actual public records decision-makers are the sheriff, police chief, city attorneys, county attorneys.
The actual decision-makers avoid being placed on the witness stand because that is part of the bigger picture of intentional obfuscation of the law. I succeeded in proving the point when I elicited testimony from Coldiron and Bartnes that it was in fact city attorneys who made the redaction/withholding decisions on Koopman's records. I’d subpoenaed Chief Ticer to testify at the hearing because I knew he was the actual records custodian. Villaseñor quashed Ticer's subpoena. At the hearing, Villaseñor realized that he (Judge Villaseñor) had quashed the actual records custodian.
This story is in many ways a microcosm of the world in which we’ve all been living these past two years: two years of unequivocal corruption, prevarication, psychological manipulation, terrorism.
Stacy Lynne, as you will no doubt recall, filed an open files request in June of 2021 — exactly nine months before Judge Juan Villaseñor, of the 8th Judicial District Court, cited “corruption issues” and as a result of which corruption issues ruled (on March 22nd, 2022) that the city of Loveland did not act in good faith in filing an early March petition.
Stacy Lynne’s open files request was made so that she might access erstwhile detective Brian Koopman’s employment files.
From June of 2021 to October of 2021, there occurred all the usual preliminary motions and the attendant dog-and-pony shows — until, at last, in late September of 2021, a show-cause hearing was set definitively for the following month: on October 27th, 2021.
Show-cause hearings are less formal than those hearings in which the plaintiff is called before judges in district court. And yet despite their less formal nature, show-cause proceedings are serious proceedings and as such require experienced attorneys, which my friend Stacy Lynne did not have but rather represented herself, as she always has.
Stacy Lynne in the opinion of many “knows more about public-record laws than most judges” — and that quote comes from a Fort Collins police detective who requested anonymity. This detective’s assessment is perhaps shared by the honorable Judge Juan Villaseñor, of the 8th Judicial District Court, who not so long ago complimented Stacy Lynne for her erudition concerning such seemingly pilpulistic matters of law — for being, as Judge Villaseñor phrased it, “well-versed” in these crucial issues known formally as freedom-of-information laws and, less formally, as flows-of-knowledge. Or perhaps the judge doesn’t share this assessment.
It was in any case, and not coincidentally (well, I wonder), this very same Judge Villaseñor, a former federal prosecutor, who presided over Stacy Lynne’s October 27th, 2021, show-cause hearing.
That day the city of Loveland had at their table not one attorney but two, neither of whom, in the opinion of more than a few courtroom observers, appeared to have any courtroom experience at all.
Loveland city clerk Delynn Coldiron and Loveland internal-affairs officer Sergeant Bryan Bartnes testified. Their attorneys were in short order slapped down by Judge Juan Villaseñor — slapped down and reprimanded.
And yet, and yet …
And yet in spite of the judge’s reprimand, it seemed to several witnesses that Judge Juan Villaseñor might somehow, in some way difficult to define or precisely pinpoint, sympathize with Delynn Coldiron and Bryan Bartnes. But perhaps this, too, was merely an appearance. It is difficult to say for certain.
One thing not difficult to say for certain:
Judge Villaseñor assumed that Stacy Lynne and her process-server had two weeks prior illegally recorded a preliminary hearing — a hearing held on October 13th, 2021 — recorded illegally, that is, as distinguished from legally purchasing the hearing transcripts, which is in fact exactly what Stacy Lynne had done and could prove and would prove.
It’s illegal to record a hearing, understand, but the transcripts are available for purchase (with all proceeds of course going toward the city). Where I’m from this sort of sweetheart set-up is known formally as “a racket.”
And the state, as Mr. Nietzsche so appositely observed, is the coldest of all cold monsters who bites with stolen teeth.
What was the reason that Judge Villaseñor assumed that there had been an illegal recording?
Was it because Stacy Lynne, at the October 27th show-cause hearing in question, quoted verbatim Judge Villaseñor’s words from the previous hearing of October 13th, 2021?
Maybe, maybe.
But it scarcely matter now — because what happened next was a textbook post-hoc, wherein Judge Villaseñor asked Stacy Lynne’s process-server, the presumed bandit recorder, to leave the courtroom.
In response to which, Ms. Lynne said this to Judge Villaseñor:
“You just kicked out my process-server. I want to know why. I paid for those transcripts, and I deserve an answer.”
Now — only now — did Judge Villaseñor seem to grasp or at least glimpse that what he’d assumed, whether through specious reasoning or honest error or whether because he’d been lied to by certain city officials or whether because of something else, wasn’t after all accurate. Thus, in a span of approximately twenty minutes, Judge Villaseñor, to his credit, made a turnaround: a turnaround precipitated by this new insight which came over the courtroom rather like the dawning of a revelation.
All politics is loco.
All.
And in fact this local occurrence I’m writing about here and now, is, as I said above and as I will repeat once more for emphasis, a microcosm of the atrocity exhibition with which the entire world has been living these past two years — a world of psychological manipulation, mass formation, and a propaganda machine bigger and more sustained by far than any other propaganda machine in human history: a world in which a billion people have been psychologically manipulated and unequivocally coerced into taking an experimental, biologically active genetic injection which, via the Emergency Authorization Act, was rushed through at “warp speed” (i.e. two months) and so never tested for longterm safety, side-effects, or consequences — never, I repeat — and all for what?
I will tell you for what:
For a coronavirus that’s safely, easily, inexpensively, and very effectively — more effectively by light years than any of these experimental biologically active genetic injections — treated with over twenty different early-treatment protocols; a coronavirus which even when left totally untreated has, according the the CDC, the FDA, the WHO et alia, an overall lethality of 0.2 percent, a number comparable to the regular seasonal flu.
Yes, reader, that is the world in which we now live.
It is a world of arrant corruption, destruction, psychological manipulation, coercion, and prevarication coming from political elites completely carious — all the way down to their crumbling core.
And all politics is local.
And loco.
And those who are faithful in a little are faithful in a lot.
The corollary of which is also true.
On October 27th, 2021, later during the same show-cause hearing, Judge Villaseñor, in a slightly unorthodox and yet perfectly legal maneuver, cross-examined city clerk Delynn Coldiron — asking a number of his own questions, ostensibly to satisfy certain issues which the judge seemed now to sense were amiss — he cross-examined Coldiron while she was on the witness stand.
The city’s attorneys objected to the judge’s out-of-the-ordinary cross-examination.
Their objections were, as you would perhaps suspect, overruled.
The October 27th, 2021, show-cause hearing concluded with brief oral arguments.
Stacy Lynne was last to go.
Throughout the entirety of Stacy Lynne’s oral close, Judge Villaseñor did not once interrupt her.
He instead took notes.
Judge Villaseñor did, however, interrupt the city attorneys, saying among other things that the burden here falls squarely upon the city — specifically, the burden to explain precisely why the city had held onto the open records requested by Ms. Lynne, even though doing so was a clear-cut violation of the Colorado Open Records Act, also called CORA.
Next, the judge permitted the city via its two attorneys to give a rebuttal to Stacy Lynne’s closing — a lopsided luxury which plaintiffs do not normally get.
“Your honor,” Stacy Lynne said, “I ask for a rebuttal close.”
“We don’t typically do that,” Judge Villaseñor said.
“If you make a ruling based in any measure upon their rebuttal,” Stacy Lynne said, “you’ll have based your ruling upon lies — and I can prove this to you now.”
Judge Juan Villaseñor cast her a long steady stare.
“I agree to hear your rebuttal,” Judge Villaseñor said.
After which Judge Villaseñor requested written closing arguments from both the plaintiff and the defense.
The outcome of it all, some two months later, was nothing short of staggering.
(to be continued …)
This is Part IV of an ongoing series:
Part I — “Loveland’s Parade of Horrible Lacks Merit” (Judge Juan Villaseñor) — can be read here.Part II — “The Flow of Knowledge” — can be read here.
Part III — “All Humans By Nature Desire to know — can be read here.
Part IV — “Judge Juan Villaseñor's Two-Month Deliberation Culminating In Loveland's "Parade Of Horribles" — can be read here.