DA's Office hires joint state/federal attorney for highway interdiction cases

The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel
By SAM KLOMHAUS Sam.Klomhaus@gjsentinel.com

District Attorney Dan Rubinstein said he has always felt highway interdiction cases should be handled in federal court, especially if they don’t have ties to Mesa County or Colorado.

“It has been something that I thought was not appropriate for state court prosecution,” Rubinstein said. “I understand the general ‘we are all part of the team’ and we have to do our part dealing with the interstate drug problem, but Mesa County happens to be on I-70 and happens to be on the Colorado to Utah border, and as a result of that I feel like we have a disproportionately large percentage of these types of cases that fall on our citizens to fund, whether that’s the citizens of Mesa County to fund the DA’s Office to prosecute them, or the citizens of Colorado to fund the Department of Corrections for the very long sentences offenders end up with.”

Rubinstein said the goal is not to just put a drug mule in prison for a long time, it’s to see if law enforcement can strike back at the organization.

“Any time you have somebody who’s in the multiple kilo or multiple pound level of drug distribution, it’s something that my expectation is my lawyers are going to seek a lengthy prison sentence,” Rubinstein said. “And when those cases are cleaning up the streets of Colorado, cleaning up the streets of Mesa County, I think it properly falls on Mesa County and Colorado citizens to fund that.”

However, because Mesa County happen to be at the border and on Interstate 70, a lot of drug trafficking investigations involve people who were just passing through.

“We end up with this interstate transportation from California to often Chicago or the East Coast that really has no tie to Colorado at all, and I think it’s important that we prosecute those cases, I don’t think it should be on Colorado citizens to fund them,” Rubinstein said.

Rubinstein said his office has identified five cases pending in Mesa County in which they will be dismissing the state charges and re-filing in federal court.

“I have continued to complain to the U.S. Attorney’s Office that this is something they should be prosecuting,” Rubinstein said. “They have told me that they don’t have the resources and it’s not just as simple for them as ‘add more resources.’ They have to go through Washington D.C. in order to get additional (Assistant U.S. Attorneys) assigned.”

Rubinstein sought assistance from the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) Program, a federal program that provides assistance to areas determined top be critical drug trafficking areas.

HIDTA already funds some law enforcement operations in Mesa County, Rubinstein said, and he approached HIDTA about funding the prosecution side as well. HIDTA agreed, and they have been trying to get this program up and running since January.

The attorney selected for the role is Janelle Surace, who previously worked as a prosecutor in Tallahassee, Florida, and Glenwood Springs.

Surace will technically be employed by Rubinstein’s office (her salary is funded by HIDTA), but she is sworn in as an Assistant U.S. Attorney who can file cases in federal court.

“Everything has been going very smoothly so far, it has been wonderful to start out here while getting my security clearance approval, so I have been able to do a couple felony trials, and the on-boarding process has been great, I’m excited, I’m ready to hit the ground running adopting a couple cases federally,” Surace said.

Surace was recently sworn in as a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney and has been going through orientation with the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Rubinstein said he thinks Surace will have a lot of good guidance in her new role from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, although the nature of the role makes for some logistic challenges.

“This is new territory for me to have an employee that works for me who is going to be supervised by another agency,” Rubinstein said. “And she is going to be subject to their standards because she is filing cases in federal court under their authority, not my authority. And so there will be some sort of challenges that are more logistical employee challenges such as completing performance reviews and who’s giving input into the performance review, and me monitoring the quality of work in a courthouse and courtroom that’s not in this building and not really under my purview, so it’s a leap of faith that the great partnership that we have had with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in a variety of capacities will continue.”

Surace said her time with the U.S. Attorney’s Office has gone well so far.

“Everyone collaborates and helps, it’s really a team effort,” Surace said.