BY DAVID GRANT LONG

Vowing to restore the public’s respect for the office, Cortez Municipal Judge Tim Tuthill announced yesterday that he will seek the Republican nomination for district attorney in the 22nd Judicial District, a post now held by Democrat Mike Green.

"There are many people walking the streets today I consider to be criminals who have had charges dismissed or lightly prosecuted (by Green)," Tuthill said, "and I feel I can turn that around.

"The bottom line is that the district attorney’s office has lost the respect of the people of Cortez, and all the law-enforcement agencies have lost respect for the office," he added. "I think I can restore that respect.

"I believe I can —I know I can — do a better job that Mike Green has, period."

Tuthill, who served for nearly three years in the early 1990s as deputy district attorney under former DA George Buck, maintained that Green has demonstrated little appetite for taking serious felony cases to trial, and inadequate ability and preparation to win most of the few he has brought to a jury.

"For my own personal reasons, I like to try cases, and I prefer to be on the right side of some of those cases," said Tuthill, who in addition to his part-time duties as city judge has been in private practice as a criminal defense attorney for the past seven years.

"Sometimes very it’s difficult to zealously defend someone who may be guilty."

Tuthill’s prosecutorial experience also includes serving a two-year internship in the Boulder County DA’s office while he was getting his law degree from the University of Colorado. And while deputy DA here, he estimated, he tried more than 40 cases in Montezuma County Court — "more than Mike ever probably will, given his current record."

Tuthill said he’d also worked on bringing felony charges in hundreds of cases while working for Buck and conducting preliminary hearings on many of these cases.

"I think that Mike is very reluctant to go to trial on a case," he said. "He doesn’t put in the time to properly prepare a case, and when he does go to trial, he doesn’t win.

"Mike’s done a handful of trials in four years . . . and his success record has been abysmal," he added. "This is a law-and-order community, but the people hold the district attorney’s office to a high standard of proof, and it requires a lot of work."

Tuthill also charged that Green has repeatedly broken a campaign promise that he wouldn’t make plea bargains in cases involving violence by allowing numerous defendants to plead guilty to reduced charges.

"I think he knew that was a promise he not only couldn’t keep, but that it sometimes shouldn’t be kept," Tuthill said, explaining that all DAs have to make plea agreements with some defendants rather than taking every case filed to trial.

"I’m not going to sit here and say to people that I won’t make plea agreements — that would be a lie," he said. "The key is being tough enough so that you can get good, tough agreements (in which) the punishment fits the crime."

"What we’ve seen is that Mike doesn’t have the stomach, the courage to prosecute," Tuthill charged. "He’s taken the path of least resistance."

And this, in turn, allows defendants to make more favorable plea bargains, he said.

"Mike doesn’t command the respect of the (defense) attorneys or defendants," Tuthill maintained. "To some degree the perception of how tough he is or what the result might be is the biggest problem," which leads to "a lot of dismissals . . . or cases pleaded out to a virtually ‘nothing’ kind of agreement.

"Sometimes you need to stand strong," he said. "You need to be willing to try cases and you need to have the respect of the other attorneys so that if you do go to trial, you will win.

"Without that kind of respect and even fear, you can’t get good plea agreements and the system breaks down, and that’s what had to be turned around."

Green’s main problem, in addition to not keeping campaign promises, is that he "just doesn’t spend the time or have the courage or the ability to prosecute," Tuthill maintained.

"Those are pretty harsh words, and some would probably prefer I use some other kind of terms, but you don’t get much vanilla from me."

Tuthill said he’d never been involved in a political race before and wasn’t particularly looking forward to it.