Douglas Bruce suffers setback in trespassing case

Colorado Springs officials did not target Douglas Bruce and another anti-tax activist when they were cited for trespass in August while collecting petition signatures outside a Costco store, a municipal judge ruled late Tuesday.

Magistrate Spencer Gresham made the ruling after a 6-hour hearing at which the entire City Council and the mayor, the city attorney and the police chief were subpoenaed to testify.

 “Who else is out there?” Gresham at one point asked Councilman Darryl Glenn, referring to the crowd of city officials milling outside the courtroom awaiting their turn in the witness stand.

“Your entire city government,” Glenn replied.

Gresham’s ruling dealt a blow to the defense that Bruce and Douglas Stinehagen wanted to use when their trespass case goes to trial before a 6-member municipal court jury on Friday.

The pair contended they were being selectively prosecuted because of their role in promoting what became Issue 300, which city voters approved last Tuesday. The measure forced the city to phase out fees it received from city enterprises.

As evidence that they were being singled out, the men cited:

• An e-mail from City Attorney Patricia Kelly asking council members if the city should drop the trespass charge after the judge tossed the original ticket on a technical flaw.

• A letter from a lawyer for Costco asking the city to tighten its restrictions on whether petition gatherers could collect signatures on private property that was open to the public. The letter cited Bruce by name.

• The fact that police did not ticket to a woman who was also helping to gather signatures at Costco on Aug. 15.
“I proved it,” Bruce told the judge. “If this is not selective prosecution, then we may as well erase the concept from the books.”

But deputy city attorney Michelle Keller countered that Kelly sent her e-mail only after the decision had been made on Sept. 21 to re-file the trespass charges.

Senior attorney Will Bain also testified that the city began researching the police department’s policy on not issuing trespass tickets in such cases in the summer of 2008 after getting complaints from lawyers for Costco and Wal-Mart.

And the police officer who issued the ticket said she had never heard of Bruce before and didn’t issue a ticket to the third activist simply because she had disappeared by the time the officer issued the tickets.

In another ruling, Gresham also allowed prosecutors to correct mistakes on the revised tickets issued to the two men. While the tickets were written as municipal trespass violations, one ticket had the wrong statute number. The statute number on Stinehagen’s ticket was for “transporting explosives.”

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