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Wrongly pointing fingers at Suthers
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Race
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| Contributor | Scott³ |
| Last Edited | Scott³ May 29, 2010 10:57pm |
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| Category | Editorial |
| Author | Denver Post |
| Media | Newspaper - Denver Post |
| News Date | Thursday, May 27, 2010 04:00:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | "By any reasonable analysis, Colorado Attorney General John Suthers is no-nonsense when it comes to law and order.
He has pushed for tough legislation that supports local police by helping them crack down on pedophiles, and for bills that require those merely charged with felonies to submit DNA. Conservatives like Gov. Bill Owens and President George W. Bush chose him to run the state's prison system and the U.S. Attorney's Office in Colorado.
So we're inclined to see his actions in the Scott Kimball debacle as justifiably based on strong law enforcement principles — and not as some soft-on- crime, Willie Horton-type gaffe, as his detractors are trying to do.
As U.S. attorney, Suthers in 2002 signed paperwork that freed Kimball, who was in prison for check fraud, to serve the FBI as a confidential informant. Kimball had claimed that a cellmate in Alaska was plotting with others to assassinate a witness in a drug case.
However, Kimball went on to commit at least four murders.
The FBI briefed Suthers' deputy prosecutors as they worked to get Kimball transferred to Colorado. That briefing appears to have included information that Kimball's past included no convictions for violent crimes. It also seems to have been conducted without Suthers, who relied on the seasoned judgment of his officers, and that of the FBI.
The FBI has since restructured its confidential informants' program to include tougher screening of potential informants. Clearly, the program was a failure as regards Kimball, and it makes sense to restructure it." |
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