When Jeffrey Wilson moved to Durango shortly after Memorial Day in 1984 to work in the 6th Judicial District Attorney’s Office, the world of courts was much different. In the more than 40 years since, Wilson – now retired chief judge of the district – has seen Southwest Colorado’s courts and the communities they serve change a lot.
Wilson officially retired from his role as chief judge on Jan. 2 after having served more than four decades in Southwest Colorado’s legal system. By many accounts, he was a fair judge who was dedicated to upholding the law.
Wilson saw the court system evolve and served in many high-level cases. Take the 1986 Cissy Taylor case – a multistate case that involved the firebombing of three downtown Durango businesses arranged by a local business owner and her husband – shortly after Wilson had started working as an attorney.
He served as a prosecutor on the case. It was extremely complicated – involving three different crime scenes in Durango alone and phone records from North Dakota. It was also before the age of computers, which meant he had to physically present all his evidence.
“We didn’t have computers. Everything was in paper,” Wilson said. “Instead of taking a computer into the courtroom, I had a library cart full of notebooks and just tons and tons of evidence, as you can imagine, from three separate bombings.”
Ultimately, the court convicted Taylor of multiple counts of felony arson. Afterward, Wilson went on to work in the district attorney’s office in Cortez until 1990, when he entered into his own private law practice.
In 2002, he was appointed by former Colorado Gov. Bill Owens as a judge in the 6th Judicial District, a position created by Colorado voters in 2001 that added new judge seats to 10 of the state’s judicial districts. In 2017, he was appointed as chief judge by Gov. John Hickenlooper.
District Attorney Sean Murray said Wilson embodied traits that make a good judge – impartiality, patience and respect for victims enduring hardship in the courtroom.
“He was someone that embodied judicial temperament and applied the law evenly,” Murray said. “I think he kind of was unflappable in having respect for victims and then treating them with dignity, understanding the difficulty that they were enduring.”
Wilson said two of the most notable cases he worked on were the 2016 Redhorse homicide case, in which three men were given multidecade prison terms for sexually assaulting and murdering a woman in 2007, and the Mark Redwine trail, in which Redwine was found guilty for abusing and murdering his 13-year-old son.
Murray said Wilson’s judicial disposition made him a good judge to rule on hard cases.
“I thought he did a great job,” Murray said of his handling of the Redwine case. “He controlled the proceedings and treated the parties with respect. He did what you expect of judges – which is a dispassionate, even, fair application of the law – making sure both sides have a right to be heard.”
Wilson’s work extended outside the courtroom. Behind the scenes, he had to ensure trials had adequate security, jurors understood what was happening and make sure the record of the trial was recorded properly.
“The courtroom stuff is a smaller percentage than people would think,” he said. “As a district court judge – and particularly after I became chief judge – it was just a ton of time preparing, getting things ready and just doing this stuff in the background that nobody sees.”
He was instrumental in the construction of a the Fred Harman III Justice Center in Archuleta County. In a controversial 2017 episode, Wilson ordered the old Archuleta County Courthouse to be vacated and court proceedings moved to the La Plata County Courthouse.
The reason, said Court Executive Eric Hogue, was because the old building – built in the early 1900s – was no longer entirely safe for use. The roof to the adjoining jail caved in the same year Wilson became chief judge, animals chewed up wires in the walls and there were health concerns tied to hazardous air quality in the building that sent two Archuleta County Sheriff’s Office deputies to the hospital.
“The building was just never constructed with the intention of housing a courthouse,” Hogue said. “(When Wilson became chief judge), we opted to do the imminent closure of the facility due to health concerns for both the public as well as the court users and the court staff themselves.”
That was in 2017. While Hogue searched for a new building to house the court, Wilson ordered court operations normally held in Archuleta County to be held in La Plata County. That lasted only a month, because the 120-mile round-trip between Pagosa Springs and Durango was incredibly inconvenient for Archuleta County residents who needed to go to court.
A new building was leased thereafter, then COVID-19 made most court proceedings go online. Finally, after years of delay, a new courthouse was built, and in 2022, Wilson signed an order to open the new Fred C. Harman III Justice Center.
“Judge Wilson was instrumental in identifying and supporting our imminent closure of that facility,” Hogue said. “He was the only one with statutory authority to do that. And he made the decision in everyone’s best interest. It was a very difficult decision, and it was a long process to get to there, but it was the right decision.”
Wilson also had to figure out how to make sure the courts ran smoothly during the COVID-19 pandemic, when it was dangerous for people to gather inside or be within 6 feet of one another.
Murray said court personnel like Wilson are instrumental to a well-functioning democratic society. Judges, attorneys and law enforcement must hold themselves to be stewards of the justice system, he said.
“I don’t assume that the community should have trust in the system,” Murray said. “The system has to earn that trust. How we conduct ourselves in the DA office, how our law enforcement partners conduct themselves in interacting with citizens in public and in the streets – that has to be community-centered. We have to consider ourselves sort of like stewards of justice for a safe community.”
Hogue said that unlike some other chief judges, Wilson made sure to have a presence in each of the three counties that make up Colorado’s 6th Judicial District – San Juan, Archuleta and La Plata counties.
“What I think was unique about how Judge Wilson approached his chief judgeship was that he made sure he had a presence,” Hogue said. “He was present in all three of our locations and was there both to preside over cases as well as for the community to see him working there.”
For Wilson, acting in the community’s trust was his north star. He said his main piece of advice for judges who succeed him is to always serve the community first.
“There is a really strong sense of serving the community,” he said. “I mean, that’s why you do it – and you want to make the community better. So just if they keep that in mind, everything will be fine.”
Wilson’s days of judging are not completely done – he said he will serve as a senior judge who roves around the state of Colorado occasionally filling in for other judges. Still, he will have more time to spend with family – particularly his grandchildren – hike, play tennis and travel.
sedmondson@durangoherald.com
