Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, Brauchler was hired as a deputy district attorney in the 18th. He was only on the job a few days before his Army Reserve unit was mobilized. When he returned from active duty, he accepted an offer to resume work in the Jeffco DA's office. He left again in 2006, this time to join the law firm of Caplis & Deasy; he is now listed "of counsel" for Feldmann & Nagel, a firm he helped to launch two years ago. (Although he occasionally filled in for his associate Dan Caplis on KHOW, as well as other hosts on that station and KOA, Brauchler's forays into talk radio stem from winning a contest on Peter Boyles's show in 2005, before he went to work for Caplis.)
Taking on civil litigation and even some criminal defense work has helped Brauchler see how the other side works, he says. He recalls defending one case involving two brothers involved in a bar fight in Steamboat Springs, in which another brawler hit his head and died. Brauchler was reluctant to take the case because the alleged victims were soldiers, but as he learned the facts, he became convinced the state had overcharged his clients.
Anthony Camera
DA candidates Ethan Feldman (above) and George Brauchler have both been shaped by their experiences as prosecutors and defense attorneys — and in Feldman's case, a long tenure as a county court judge.
DA candidate George Brauchler.
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See also:
- James Holmes case exploited on Facebook by district attorney candidate?
- Edward Montour: The other death-penalty decision facing the new DA
Related stories by Alan Prendergast from the
Westword archives:
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Sucker Punch: ‘Big Bitch’ policy could bite fighting concertgoer,” May 22, 2012.
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"Welcome to Arapahell,” November 24, 2011.
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Carol Chambers under fire for giving witness a car in death-penalty case,” May 13, 2011.
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Perez acquittal: A stunning rebuke of Chambers’s death-penalty chase?,” February 2, 2011.
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The Good, the Bad and the Mad: What happens to the mentally ill in the justice system is crazy,” May 29, 2008.
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Bad Execution: Judge blasts prosecution misconduct in death-penalty case,” April 10, 2008.
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Arapahoe County DA charges death-penalty fees to the state,” February 28, 2008.
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A Thumb on the Scales: The DA weighs in on the wrong case,” February 8, 2007.
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Carol Chambers: The Punisher,” February 8, 2007.
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"I would be a far better prosecutor today than when I left the DA's office in 2006 because of my experience as a defense attorney and a civil attorney, seeing things from different angles," he says.
Brauchler was mobilized again last year, which gave him an opportunity to serve as a military prosecutor with the Judge Advocate General's Office in Iraq and at Fort Carson. Instructive as they may have been, his frequent moves between the public and private sector have also fueled attacks by his opponents, who question his commitment to a prosecution career and wonder why he never achieved a chief deputy position at Jeffco. Brauchler insists that his departure from Jeffco was motivated by a better offer from Caplis & Deasy, not frustration with his lot. "It's hard to turn down opportunities that you think are going to make things easier at home," he says.
After his surprisingly strong challenge of Chambers four years ago, Brauchler returned to take on Leslie Hansen in the primary this year, only to be denounced as an "empty suit" by the Hansen camp. But Brauchler fought back ably, defending his record and expressing alarm at Hansen's stated intention to keep Chambers as one of her top aides, engaging in what he calls a game of "musical chairs in the corner office."
Hansen lost that game. Brauchler now bills himself on his campaign website as the choice for "Experienced Conservative Leadership for District Attorney," complete with a snapshot of the candidate in fatigues, taken last year in Iraq.
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If Brauchler is the conservative in the race, that makes Feldman the moderate, if not the dreaded L-word. But Feldman says prosecution should be above politics. When he went to work for Bob Gallagher, the Republican who ran the DA's office in the 18th for 26 years, nobody asked him about his party affiliation or his personal ideology. Instead, Gallagher summoned him to his office to explain his "guidelines."
Prepared to take notes, Feldman brought a legal pad to the meeting. Gallagher told him to put it away. "These are the guidelines," he said. "Do the right thing. Now get to work."
The lesson wasn't lost on the young deputy. "Prosecution is prosecution," Feldman says now. "Experience is what matters."
The son of a medical physicist and a therapist, Feldman grew up in Colorado. He received his undergraduate degree at Northwestern and his law degree from the University of Denver. Like Brauchler, he began interning for the district attorney's office while still in school; Gallagher hired him as a deputy district attorney as soon as he passed the bar in 1974.
He moved quickly from county court cases to juvenile court, where he helped to launch the 18th's pioneering diversion program, to the chief deputy responsible for major crime prosecutions. By his count, he handled around seventy jury trials as a prosecutor, including eleven homicide cases that went to trial.
"I remember all of them quite well," Feldman says. "You don't forget the faces of the victims or their families."
The crimes were indelible: an eight-year-old girl killed across the street from the courthouse in Kiowa, by drifters her parents had taken in. A woman kidnapped and raped by a neighbor, who killed her companion and left her for dead in a field; shot five times, she crawled half a mile to the nearest house and later testified against her attacker from her hospital bed. ("Her will to live — that's what stuck with me," Feldman says.) A fatal child-abuse case against a stepfather that involved uncovering an escalating cycle of violence to persuade a jury that the child hadn't simply fallen down stairs.
Feldman credits Gallagher with establishing a strong victim-advocacy system within the DA's office long before the state passed its victims'-rights legislation. The candidate's wife, Nancy Feldman, helped to launch the Sungate Children's Advocacy Center and now heads the Office of Victims Programs in the Colorado Department of Public Safety. Seeking justice and aid for crime victims "has been in our family DNA for some time," he says.
