DA: Weekend bond hearings create risk without accountability
Grand Junction Daily Sentinel
By JACE DICOLA Jace.DiCola@gjsentinel.com
Oct 30, 2025 Updated Oct 31, 2025
According to Mesa County District Attorney Dan Rubinstein, an oversight in the judicial program enforcing that law has contributed to notable public safety and accountability concerns.
Essentially, he said judges conducting local weekend bond hearings have repeatedly strayed from the district’s philosophy of unattainable bonds for anyone who is a public safety risk.
Perhaps most importantly, he added, there is no accountability to the voters.
“I’m trying to get our local judges, who are accountable to our local voters through the election and retention process, to be the ones who set bonds,” Rubinstein said. “If we don’t like the way they’re setting their bonds, we can vote them off the bench.
“We have no recourse with these bond hearing officers, who are accountable to a chief judge in a different judicial district that never appears on our ballot.”
The law in question, HB21-1280, dictates that bond setting hearings must occur within 48 hours of “an arrestee’s arrival at a jail or holding center.”
To make that happen, courts across the state would have to schedule and staff additional hearings.
So, the Legislature created a weekend bond hearing officer program, providing smaller districts without the necessary funds or caseload with a magistrate and support staff to virtually conduct weekend hearings.
Mesa County has long participated in the bond hearing officer program, and while well-intentioned, Rubinstein said he has grown increasingly frustrated with the virtual magistrates’ tendencies to set low bonds for people who are likely threats to the community.
‘AN UNACCEPTABLE PUBLIC SAFETY RISK’
When asked for examples of that philosophical difference, Rubinstein pointed to a few cases:
Earlier this year, a man was arrested for multiple felonies, including human trafficking, kidnapping and attempting to sexually exploit a minor. He was also charged with a misdemeanor for contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
According to an arrest affidavit, law enforcement discovered in February of this year that then-54-year-old Frank Cook had spent nearly three years messaging an initially 11-year-old girl.
Over the years, Cook would frequently send money for alcohol, marijuana, psychedelic mushrooms and fast food deliveries. He allegedly sent “at least” $1,000 to the girl (and eventually her cousin) each month — in exchange for nudes and “bikini pics.”
The man went on to allegedly purchase a sex toy for one of the girls, proposed purchasing a home in Grand Junction where he and one of the girls could “live together” and frequently visited town, spending the nights in a hotel with both of the girls on at least one occasion.
While the DA requested a $100,000 cash-only bond, the weekend magistrate set the bond at $100,000 surety (via bondsman) or $15,000 cash, which Cook posted soon after.
Between the start of July and the end of September, Mesa County had just more than 120 weekend bond hearings.
The most recent example Rubinstein cited is the contrast in the bonds of four perpetrators of the same home invasion, which occurred in early September.
According to court documents, one of the attempted burglars was the male victim’s 29-year-old son. After asking his father to open the door, the son allegedly barged into the home with three armed individuals in tow.
The ensuing brief struggle concluded with the son allegedly shoving his father onto a living room chair, at which point the female suspect kept a handgun pointed at him. As the suspects tried to direct the other victim (the father’s girlfriend) into the living room, the couple was able to run into their bedroom and lock the door.
The four suspects quickly departed, but the reporting investigator noted that their possession of duffel bags suggested an intent to steal that simply didn’t take place because the plan went awry.
Judges with the 21st District arraigned two of the suspects, including the victim’s son, on $50,000 cash-only bonds, citing “serious community safety and likelihood to appear concerns.”
The weekend magistrate who arraigned the other two defendants set $1,000 and $5,000 cash bonds. An arrest affidavit suggests that the female defendant, who received the $5,000 bond, did most of the threatening with a firearm.
“If I can’t get the judges who are presiding over these hearings to set bonds in line with what our judges will do, then it’s my obligation to do what I was elected to do, which is to represent my citizens and find a better solution,” Rubinstein said.
WORKING FOR THE WEEKENDS
Rubinstein said he has sought to have Mesa County’s own judges preside over its weekend bond hearings, essentially since the program started three years ago.
According to him, those efforts were initially met with resistance from local judges, but providing repeated examples of the “completely inappropriate” bonds eventually led to an agreement.
However, Mesa County’s judges are not the only piece of the puzzle. No judge can conduct a hearing without the judicial staff required to open each case file, and the local judges told Rubinstein that their staff simply is not a viable option.
“They don’t have staff to come in on the weekends, and it’s hard to find people right now,” Rubinstein said. “If we have a labor shortage and tell somebody, ‘Sorry, we said you’re going to have your weekends off, but you don’t have your weekends off anymore…’ They’re gonna lose people.”
With that as the only remaining barrier, Rubinstein said there was a simple solution: remain in the bond hearing officer program to utilize the state-provided judicial staff, but swap the bond hearing officer judges for those in the 21st District. Essentially, he said, the state would save money on its judges, and Mesa County would have a way to supplement its strained judicial workforce, which is the intention of the bond hearing officer program.
According to Rubinstein, however, that request to the 14th District’s bond hearing officer office — one of three statewide — was denied. 14th District Chief Judge Brittany Schneider said that participating jurisdictions can only receive bond hearing officer staff support if the program’s magistrates conduct the hearings.
Schneider declined a request for further comment in lieu of a statement from the Colorado Judicial Department, which attributed the restriction to the law’s fiscal note.
“Funding for support staff is allocated to (bond hearing officer)-hosting counties to support the (bond hearing officer) magistrates’ hearings,” a department spokesperson said. “The funding for (full-time employees) and expenses for bond hearing offices was outlined in the fiscal note for the establishing bill.”
That fiscal note for HB 12-1280 does not contain an explicit restriction on which staff participating districts can utilize.
Additionally, the document only discussed court judicial assistants in the context of which staff will be necessary in bond hearing officer offices to serve participating districts.
A different fiscal note, for a 2023 law clarifying the 48-hour hearing requirement, added that bond hearing officers were intended to “assist rural, multi-county districts where staff resources are limited, as well as centralized staff to provide data entry and technical support.”
The department also defended the bond-setting practices of its bond hearing officer magistrates, stating that they are guided by state law in setting bond requirements and are entitled to individual discretion.
“(The 14th District’s BHO) periodically holds stakeholder meetings for law enforcement, judges, attorneys, and others to review community expectations and job requirements in the districts where BHO services are provided,” a spokesperson added.
CONSIDERING A LEGISLATIVE APPROACH
Regardless of the restriction’s origin, Rubinstein said it’s clear that his efforts toward a solution haven’t been reciprocated.
“I’m not seeing anything in the law that requires that, and the (item) that was cited to us as requiring it was the fiscal note, but the fiscal note is not law,” Rubinstein said. “I’ve interpreted all of this as they’re not interested in change.”
Given that, he said, the best path forward appears to be another law.
According to Rubinstein, the bill would explicitly allow judicial districts participating in the bond hearing officer program to access the state-subsidized support staff without the magistrate.
That approach has been much more fruitful, as he has already engaged four state legislators who are interested in sponsoring a bipartisan bill.
”It’s always been very easy to work with our district attorney,” State Sen. Janice Rich, R-Grand Junction, said. “There’s not a whole lot I can talk about right now … but the premise of it is to address a public safety gap and restore accountability to the bond hearing process in Mesa County.”
Rich added that the bill is still in its infancy, and while the state’s legislative session will start in January, it’s tough to predict a timeline for when it might be passed.
Rubinstein said that even with a quick turnaround, the legislative fix will take much longer than if the state’s justice department were open to a collaborative policy change.
“The decisions we make on bond are managing risk. We’re taking risks in letting people out, and we’re not taking risks when we don’t,” Rubinstein said.
“Is it possible that something very bad could happen between now and when the Legislature addresses this and it gets the governor’s signature? Absolutely.”
