ACLU client James Fisher was a victim of the unfair and unconstitutional debtors’ prison practices of municipal courts that ACLU of Colorado has criticized for years.
In 2012, Mr. Fisher was convicted in Aurora Municipal Court of three ordinance violations: two for open container (issued on the same evening) and one for driving without insurance. The court ordered Mr. Fisher to pay $678 in fines and court costs and put him on a payment plan.
Over the next four years, Mr. Fisher found only intermittent work as a day laboror, and he lived in hotels and homeless shelters. Nevertheless, he made significant efforts to pay his debt to the court. He made 19 separate payments totaling $1498 (far more than his original debt), but he wasn’t always able to make the full payments his payment plan required.
The Aurora Municipal Court assessed Mr. Fisher a total of $1680 in additional fees and issued 14 warrants for Mr. Fisher’s arrest. He was arrested three times on those warrants. After four years, Mr. Fisher had paid almost three times the amount of his original debt, yet the Aurora Municipal Court claimed he still owed an additional $860.
During those four years, the Aurora Municpal Court imposed multiple “failure to appear” fees of $25 and an additional $75 “warrant fee” whenever Mr. Fisher missed a payment, was late with a payment, made only a partial payment, or did not come to court on a payment date.
In 2016, Mr. Fisher provided critical legislative testimony about his personal ordeal in support of HB 16-1311, a bill to plug a loophole in the 2014 legislation that prohibited courts from issuing “failure to pay” warrants. The loophole: many municipal courts, including Aurora, had continued using jail and the threat of jail to collect fines and fees from persons convicted of minor violations. They did this by setting each payment date as a required court appearance and then issuing “failure to appear” warrants (instead of the prohibited “failure to pay” warrants) if a payment was missed. Several legislators credited Mr. Fisher’s testimony as especially moving and persuasive. The bill passed and was signed into law in June, 2016.
The following month, ACLU lawyers sent a detailed demand letter to the City of Aurora that documented Mr. Fisher's four years trapped in the cycle of Aurora court debt. After negotiation, Aurora agreed to close Mr. Fisher's municipal court cases and cancel hundreds of dollars of Mr. Fisher's remaining debt. Aurora also agreed to reimburse to Mr. Fisher almost $800 in overpayments that the ACLU's letter documented.
ACLU news releases and documents:
- "Bills to protect the rights of poor defendants in municipal court receive broad bipartisan support, head to the Governor's desk," ACLU News Update, May 2, 2016
- "Fact Sheet, HB 16-1311--a bill to end debtors' prisons in Colorado," ACLU of Colorado, April 6, 2016
- "James Fisher tells his debtors' prison story," (video), ACLU news update, August 23, 2017
- "Debtors' prison settlement: Aurora cancels debt, withdraws warrants, and repays James Fisher for excessive payments to municipal court," ACLU News Release, January 23, 2017
Media:
- "Colorado lawmakers look to close “debtors’ prison” loophole," The Denver Post, April 26, 2016
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“Under proposed bill, Colorado's municipal courts would be unable to jail someone for failure to pay,” Colorado Springs Gazette, April 27, 2016
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“Despite 2014 law, those who can't pay court fines are still jailed: So Colorado lawmaker tries again,” ABA Journal, April 27, 2016
- "Aurora looking at vacating thousands of arrest warrants after new law targeting debtor’s prison loophole," Aurora Sentinel, June 27, 2016
- "City of Aurora settles dispute over excessive court fees," Aurora Sentinel, January 18, 2007