Republican DA bucks blue state's 'broken sentencing' with tough-on-crime approach

A tough-on-crime Republican district attorney is using his years of prosecuting some of the most infamous cases in Colorado to crack down on crime across the blue state. 

In January, George Brauchler became the first-ever district attorney for Colorado's 23rd Judicial District, making it the first time in more than 60 years that Colorado added a new judicial district. 

He previously served as DA for the 18th Judicial District, where he prosecuted some of the state's biggest mass shooting cases, including at an Aurora movie theater and Columbine High School.

"I was a very young prosecutor when Columbine happened, and Columbine was the high school immediately to the south of where I graduated from high school," Brauchler told Fox News Digital during an interview. "And so, when it occurred to be assigned to prosecute the felonies out of that, I thought at the time that would be the biggest, worst case I would ever handle, and I was wrong and that's an amazing revelation to come to in this job."

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George Brauchler, lead prosecutor in the case against convicted Colorado theater shooter James Holmes, responds to questions during an interview, Aug. 14, 2015, in Centennial, Colo. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

Soon after Brauchler was elected to a "broader version" of his current jurisdiction, the Aurora theater shooting case happened.

"A guy walked into a movie theater at about 2:25 in Alameda and tried to murder a theater full of people, and I ended up prosecuting that. We also ended up having a mass shooting here at a school at the end of my time in office. I was also asked to do the mock cross-examination of the victim in the Kobe Bryant rape case out of Vail back, I don't know, almost 20 years ago now. It's not anything you could really ever plan for. It's just, you're there. You always say yes," Brauchler explained while reflecting on his earlier career.

"You end up developing a skill set and an expertise. And then you find yourself in a position to run for the first new district attorney's office in over 60 years in Colorado. And you think, for whatever it's worth, as humbly as I can put this, there just isn't anybody that brings to this job right now the kind of experience that I have. And I hope to use it for the benefit of my community."

Last month, Brauchler secured a rare first-degree murder conviction in a high-profile DUI case, which marked the first murder trial in Colorado’s newly formed 23rd Judicial District. 

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The case involved Paul Stephenson, 57, who Brauchler said drank a bottle of Fireball and two beers before crashing into a minivan that was parked in Castle Rock last August.

"That case was so disturbing to me on a lot of levels," Brauchler said. 

Lt. Col. Matthew Anderson, a 39-year-old Air Force test pilot and father of four, was killed while pumping gas. His wife was inside the gas station store at the time of the crash. One of their children suffered a fractured skull and two others were also injured.

"On a Sunday afternoon, filling his car with gas while his wife goes to get the kids Popsicles, some two-time convicted drunk pours himself into a lifted Chevy Silverado, crosses five lanes of traffic, hops a curb, hits the accelerator to 98% and crushes that car at 45 miles an hour, injuring three of the kids and killing Lt. Col. Matt Anderson," Brauchler said, describing the horrific scene that unfolded.

"In Colorado, the gut reaction charge would be, oh, that's vehicular homicide. And that sounds horrible, but in Colorado, we have some of the weakest traffic laws in the country. So vehicular [homicide] would have only been punishable at most by 12 years in the Department of Corrections. Given our broken sentencing scheme, that guy would have been paroled in probably less than four years, and that seemed wholly unacceptable to me and everybody that looked at this case," Brauchler continued.

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District Attorney George Brauchler talks to the media, May 18, 2016, after a plea hearing for retired Army Col. Eric Henderson, who was accused of hit-and-run, vehicular homicide and drunken driving resulting in the death of Colorado State Trooper Jaimie Jursevics in November 2015. (Andy Cross/Denver Post via Getty Images)

To ensure that justice was served, Brauchler said his office got a "little aggressive" and charged the driver with first-degree murder based on "extreme indifference." 

"We pursued it. And I'm not going to tell you it didn't have risks. I'm not going to tell you that I didn't have a pit in my stomach. But in about three and a half hours of deliberation after about a weeklong trial, the jury came back and said, ‘Yeah, guilty of first-degree murder,’ and we're all pretty satisfied with that outcome," Brauchler said. 

Brauchler added what this case also highlighted was that he feels "we have lost sight of the purpose of the criminal justice system and taken our eye off the ball on day-to-day crimes," like DUI. 

"One thing about this is that there is no time of day, no road you can drive on that you can say, 'Well, I'm safe from drunk drivers at this time on this road.' My God, this was Sunday. On a road in the middle of Castle Rock, not a highway, on a road but across the street from the Douglas County Fair. If we don't, I think, vigilantly attack this problem as much as any other, maybe more so, we're going to see more of this, and this is the most preventable crime there is. This guy chose to risk people's lives, and now he's going to lose his freedom," Brauchler said. 

Brauchler said Anderson's wife and children have recovered, but the ripple effects of witnessing the horrific scene are "still unknown as to how far they stretch through their lives."

"How does seeing the violent death of their father in front of them, the way they saw him lying in the parking lot with a massive head injury, missing his leg above the ankle, how does that haunt them throughout the rest of their lives? I don't think anybody knows," Brauchler said. 

Members of a police SWAT team march to Columbine High School on April 20, 1999. (AP/File)

"I have spoken with the widow many times. She is resilient and tough, but you can also see there's something missing in her eyes. I don't know how better to describe it, but I've seen it a lot with loss like this and that blue flame that flickers back there that tells you somebody's fully engaged is just a little more diminished. It's a little harder to see. And my hope for that family is that they can figure out a way to find happiness even without Col. Anderson." 

Tom Mustin, director of media relations for Brauchler's office, told Fox News Digital that "typically, DUI cases lead to vehicular homicide charges, but this case set a new precedent and reflects DA Brauchler's tough-on-crime approach that helped win him the office." 

"I don't shy away from the description ‘tough on crime,’ but when did simply enforcing the law and having an expectation that there would be accountability for breaking it become ‘tough on [crime]?'" Brauchler said. "That just tells you how far we've shifted away from the idea of personal responsibility for criminal conduct. But I'm proud of the position we've taken. It's been well-received everywhere. And I mean not just in our jurisdiction, but when I go to other jurisdictions."

Brauchler, a Republican DA in the heavily blue Denver metro area, said Colorado has "taken such a sharp turn towards the progressive left that every other office is now dominated by Democrats," which makes his position unique.

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A woman embraces her daughter after the Columbine High School shooting. (AP/File)

"I'll tell you one thing that sticks out to me that's odd is that I've made a real point of telling the public, even before I took office, we're going to be an office that stands for the rule of law, and that if people come down here to steal from us or victimize us, they ought to expect to be incarcerated," Brauchler said. "That message has been so overwhelmingly received and in a positive way, like people clap when I say that."

Brauchler added that when he started working in his field 30 years ago and had this same messaging, it would have been a "yawn fest."

"People would have been like, 'Duh, that's what prosecutors and police do.' But that's how far we've shifted in the other direction," Brauchler said. 

When asked about other high-profile cases like the Menendez brothers' case in California, Brauchler said "there's no good message that comes out of these two ever walking out of prison."

"I remember when these cases happened, and I followed them like everybody else," Brauchler said. "But this was a brutal, planned murder for the most selfish reasons possible. Anything they come up with at this point, by way of excuse, has already been air-dried in front of the jury and rejected when they were convicted. There's no good message for America that comes out of these guys ever taking a free breath again."

Brauchler said what is troubling about the Menendez brothers' case being brought back up is that "every time something like this happens and someone sees any amount of success, it encourages others to do this."

James Holmes (AP)

"You have to believe that there are any number of defense attorneys out there who are willing to shoot for the notoriety or the paycheck. In order to try to capture something like this, I'm not denigrating them. I know that's business, but the answer should be that we should forget about the Menendez brothers." 

Brauchler said what the Menendez brothers' case highlights is something that has been happening since the Aurora theater shooting that is amplifying killers. 

"There has been a real concerted effort by decent people and many in the media to no longer amplify the killers; like, we should be focused on the victims. I would say since the Aurora theater shooter, I've said that guy's name maybe four times through the whole trial, which lasted from Jan. 20th until April 7th, 2015. I said his name exactly twice. And that was by design," Brauchler explained. 

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"And so here we are again, focused on the Menendez brothers and the Netflix things about the Menendez brothers. And I understand that, but we should really de-glorify the criminals and focus more on the victims and the crime that was committed. And I think that if you let these guys out, you do the opposite."

Brauchler added that there are even studies now about the correlation between the amount of notoriety that a criminal gets and then copycat-type crimes.

"I'll give you an example with Columbine. The STEM school mass shooting that I covered, both of those shooters had passing fascination with those Columbine shooters. We had a near-mass shooting at another high school right down the road from my kid's high school. They both had a fascination with the Columbine shooters and the Aurora theater shooter. Guess which case he researched before he left his apartment back on July the 19th to go murder these people? Columbine. So, the more notorious an event or some people become, it does have an effect on other folks," Brauchler said. 

"I get it, we have to report the bad guy or bad girl at least once," Brauchler continued. "Then after that, let's not talk about them anymore. Let's talk about the crime. Let's talk about the victims, and let's go to court."