Arapahoe DA cleared of all but one charge

Ivan Moreno, Rocky Mountain News

Published December 26, 2006 at midnight

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Arapahoe County District Attorney Carol Chambers will face "public censure" — but no other disciplinary action — for her involvement in an acquaintance's dispute with a collection agency attorney last year, a three-judge panel decided today.

Although the disciplinary panel of the Attorney Regulation Counsel, which investigates lawyer misconduct, cleared Chambers on three of the four counts she faced, there was enough evidence to prove she used the power of her office to intimidate a collections attorney into dropping a lawsuit against Laurrett Barrentine, an Englewood councilwoman and acquaintance of Chambers.

Jonathan R. Steiner, who was working for Central Credit Corp. last year, filed a complaint against Chambers in June. He alleged Chambers lied to him about the number of complaints against him and threatened him with a grand jury investigation when she left him a voicemail on Jan. 23. In the voicemail, Chambers said her office was "getting a lot of complaints from victims of identity theft that you are pressuring them, shall I say, to pay on checks that they did not write."

Chambers also said in the voicemail that she was "looking at investigating this with the grand jury, and I’d like to hear your input first if you’d like to make it ..."

However, Chambers could not name any agencies or victims besides Central Credit and Barrentine when she testified at her October disciplinary hearing. She said she was in a hurry when she left the message to Steiner and that when she said "you," she was referring to collection agencies in general, not Steiner specifically.

Today's decision cleared Chambers of the allegations that she knowingly lied when she said she had received several complaints against Steiner, or that she was threatening to prosecute him.

Both Chambers and Barrentine have said they are not friends, but know each other from Republican Party functions they've attended.

It was at one of those functions in November 2005 that Barrentine told Chambers that Steiner continued to hassle her to pay checks she said she never wrote.

Barrentine said Chambers referred her to her husband, Nathan, also an attorney, who agreed to give Barrentine advice for free.

The collection agency dropped a lawsuit against Barrentine on Jan. 31, a week after Chambers called Steiner and a day before the matter was scheduled for trial.

Steiner had said the reason he and his employer dropped the matter was because Chambers and her husband became involved. The collection agency paid Barrentine $220 in court costs.

But Chambers said Steiner had a weak case against Barrentine and should’ve never sued her. Chambers’ office had already cleared Barrentine on a previous collections case because an investigator concluded she was an identity theft victim.

Chambers is the district attorney for Arapahoe, Douglas, Elbert and Lincoln counties.

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