By Matt Masich, LAW WEEK COLORADO
DENVER – Barring unforeseen scandal, Stephanie Villafuerte will be the next U.S. attorney for Colorado. Villafuerte, deputy chief of staff for Gov. Bill Ritter and a former Denver chief deputy district attorney and assistant U.S. Attorney, has passed the FBI background check and Department of Justice vetting. She now awaits a hearing before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee and confirmation by the full U.S. Senate – but how long she will wait is far from certain.
President Barack Obama officially nominated Villafuerte on Sept. 30, his 30th nominee out of 93 U.S. attorney positions. The president’s first nominees were announced June 4, and one of them, New Jersey’s Paul Fishman, has still not been confirmed after four months. But others have sailed through. Neil MacBride of the Eastern District of Virginia was nominated Aug. 6 and confirmed Sept. 15, spending just over a month in limbo.
Reached shortly after the announcement, Villafuerte politely referred calls to the U.S. Department of Justice, saying she has been instructed not to discuss the nomination.
In Washington, Erica Chabot, press secretary for judiciary committee chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy, reported that “there isn’t really a firm timeline” for the confirmation hearings.
Villafuerte must complete a questionnaire on her job qualifications and background, and the committee must review it, before confirmation hearings can take place.
“Some nominees, depending on the length on their record or what they’ve been doing in their careers, can take longer to be confirmed,” Chabot said.
David Gaouette, the current U.S. attorney, is serving a 120-day term that will expire in early December. If a new U.S. attorney is not sworn in by then, the U.S. District Court for Colorado will appoint one until Villafuerte, or another presidential appointee, can take office.
The Colorado Hispanic Bar Association, of which Villafuerte is a member, has urged Sens. Michael Bennet and Mark Udall to get confirmation as soon as possible.
Mix of skills
Despite uncertainty about timing, confirmation seems inevitable for Villafuerte, a Democrat who is facing a Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate.
Still, some Republicans have responded to her nomination by dusting off her involvement in a 2006 political kerfuffle involving Cory Voorhis. The federal immigration agent was acquitted of improperly accessing a federal crime database to supply information to Ritter’s gubernatorial opponent, Republican Bob Beauprez. Some allege Villafuerte improperly accessed the same information on behalf of the Ritter campaign but was not similarly prosecuted.
Villafuerte is a 1987 graduate of the University of Denver and earned her J.D. from UCLA in 1991. She was a prosecutor in the Denver DA’s office, becoming head of the Juvenile Court Division, moving to the U.S. Attorney’s office from 1998 to 2001, before returning to the DA’s office. Her highest-profile case came in 2005, when she convicted serial rapist Brent Brents of 68 felony counts that brought a prison sentence of 1,319 years.
Advice from past office-holders
If Villafuerte is sworn in, she will be the state’s third U.S. attorney in a year. During times of transition, it’s important for the new U.S. attorney to quickly get acquainted with the bigger investigations that have been inherited, said Bob Miller, U.S. attorney for Colorado from 1981 to 1988 and now managing partner at Perkins Coie’s Denver office
“As incoming U.S. attorney, you have to make sure you understand what those cases are and if they’re being handled properly, and make sure that your transition does not interfere with the smooth flow of the progress of those important cases,” he said.
Miller – who, like Villafuerte, came from a criminal law background – said one of his biggest challenges was learning about the large civil caseload the office handles.
John Suthers, former U.S. attorney and current state attorney general, responded to an inquiry from Law Week Colorado asking what advice he’d give the incoming U.S. attorney:
“We need fewer ‘cookie-cutter,’ ‘one size fits all’ anti-crime programs on the federal level,” Suthers said. “The U.S. Attorney also needs to be heavily engaged in large white collar cases because they are uniquely resourced to handle such cases.”
