Carroll: Misplaced outrage

By Vincent Carroll
Denver Post Columnist

A mother's grief over the murder of her three children has dogged Castle Rock police for 12 years. Now it has spurred an international human rights agency into a foolish ruling claiming the government violated her rights.

The decision by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights won't have any immediate effect on Colorado law or police procedure. Still, it's an embarrassment to an organization charged with highlighting flagrant abuses of human rights in the Americas by governments or private interests. And it represents an unworkable view of the duty of police to deter crime and hunt down lawbreakers.

Perhaps Castle Rock police could have done more on that tragic evening of June 22, 1999, when they got a call from Jessica Gonzales (now Jessica Lenahan) saying her estranged husband, Simon, had abducted their three daughters. Lenahan and her supporters at the ACLU and various law schools maintain police merely counseled her to wait every time she contacted them rather than aggressively pursue him.

At 3:20 in the morning, Simon Gonzales drove up to the police station and opened fire. He was killed in the ensuing gun battle, but he'd already murdered his kids, who were found in the cab of his truck.

The human rights commission says Lenahan deserves "full reparations" because police failed to enforce a restraining order and thus ignored their duty to protect the family from domestic violence.

If Castle Rock police had known Simon Gonzales was poised to kill a 7-, 8- and 10-year-old that night, you can bet they'd have dropped everything and mounted an all-out search. But they had no idea what was in store, and neither, apparently, did Lenahan. The court order allowed Gonzales to see the children on regular occasions, so he was not viewed as an imminent threat. And news stories at the time say an officer reported asking "Jessica Gonzales if she thought Simon J. Gonzales would hurt the children," and that she said, "No."

Moreover, police did check at his apartment as well as go to her house. They were concerned, but not frantic.

Is it fair or reasonable to assert an absolute right to protection if you have a restraining order? That's essentially the Lenahan/ ACLU position, but it's hard to see how it would work in practice. And it's been rejected in a 7-2 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court.

In Town of Castle Rock vs. Gonzales, decided in 2005, the court said, "It is hard to imagine that a Colorado peace officer would not have some discretion to determine that — despite probable cause to believe a restraining order has been violated — the circumstances of the violation or the competing duties of that officer or his agency counsel decisively against enforcement in a particular instance. The practical necessity for discretion is particularly apparent in a case such as this one, where the suspected violator is not actually present and his whereabouts are unknown."

The Inter-American Commission complains that Lenahan's "contacts were met with a police response that was fragmented, uncoordinated and unprepared, and it did not respect the terms of the restraining order." Yet it is not remotely clear that police could have found Gonzales in time to prevent the murders even if they'd devoted every resource at their disposal to the effort.

The Western Hemisphere is a big place, and despite progress it is still home to plenty of horrifying human-rights abuses. Putting the Castle Rock murders on par with such cases cheapens a noble cause.

E-mail Vincent Carroll at vcarroll@denverpost.com.


(2011-8-21/denverpost.com)