Temple: Publisher an outlaw - for a day

Published July 15, 2006 at midnight

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Everyone who comes through the doors of Room 109 has a story, or so the clerk at Denver city hall tells me.

And it's clear that as different as I might think mine is, she's heard them all - and she's not interested.

So I hope you'll listen instead, to the story of my day as a wanted man, a man with a bench warrant out for his arrest.

Wanted even as I sat Wednesday with the mayor, his chief of staff and spokeswoman to hear him tell our editorial board about his vision for the city.

Wanted even as I jogged the Sixth Avenue Parkway.

Wanted even as I slept in my very own bed.

It all started, as such stories often do, on an ordinary spring day. May 24, 2006, to be exact. Shortly after noon.

I was driving back to Denver from an overnight meeting in Boulder. I would have gone directly to my office, but I needed to dress up for a reception that night for the Denver Newspaper Agency's new CEO. So I headed home first to change.

That was my first mistake. It wouldn't be my last.

Turning off Colorado Boulevard onto Montview, the signs made clear I needed to be careful about my speed. First there was the warning of a bike lane. Then a school zone. Then a 20 mph sign. And another school zone sign. And another. And then I saw the police car going the other direction. And then he was on my tail, lights flashing.

You might not be surprised to hear that I didn't agree with the friendly but firm officer when he told me that I had been speeding. I told him politely that I didn't mean to argue, but that I knew I wasn't going too fast, that this was my old neighborhood, the place where I had raised my children, and there was just no way I would speed there. (By the way, I didn't tell him that I've never received a ticket in my 35 years of driving.)

I asked whether he had caught me on radar. It was clear from the look on his face that he hadn't. Things were looking up, I thought.

But while I was concentrating on making my case, I was too flustered to be able to dig up my insurance and registration, which were buried in a pile of papers in my glove box.

That gave the officer an out, at least the way I heard it. I thought he told me he'd drop the speeding charge and all I needed to do was go to court and show that I really did have insurance, proof of which I found as soon as I got home.

I saw the two big X's he'd scrawled over the penalty assessment portion of the ticket and figured I'd come out all right.

Wrong. Doubly wrong.

First, I put on my calendar that I needed to show up in court July 13. Big problem. I was supposed to be there July 11. Which I discovered the morning of the 12th.

That's when I learned the news that could have put me behind bars: There was a warrant out for my arrest.

I headed to court for the first possible hearing, but I learned that I'd probably have to hang around so long that I'd miss our meeting with the mayor. So I decided to risk a few more hours as a wanted man and return to court at the end of the day.

When I did, an amiable clerk warned me that I could settle right then. If I didn't and went to court, she said, "there is always the possibility you will be arrested."

In other words, I could be busted. Behind bars. In jail.

I decided to take the risk. After all, this was all just a big misunderstanding, I thought.

If only life unfolded the way we think it should.

I found myself on the hard benches in courtroom 104B, with about 20 other folks, mostly young men in jeans and T-shirts, one just fresh from the penitentiary.

We stood for the magistrate, who told us about our rights. We had a lot of them. This was no Miranda warning. This was the full deal.

At the tail end of the list of names, he called John Tempe. Yes, that was me, I figured the second time he said Tempe.

Now was my chance to tell my story, to be vindicated.

So after his honor told me that I had an offer of a plea bargain to two points instead of four, I tried to tell him my story. But he wasn't interested either. If I wanted to have a judge listen, we needed to have the officer in court, too. We needed a trial. And that would mean another date.

I'm a fighter, but did I really want to blow more time on this? I took the two points and went to the cashier to pay my fine of $206, including court costs.

That's when a clerk gave me proof that for one day the publisher of the Rocky Mountain News was a wanted man. (See the document above.)

Not as bad as getting shot in the street the way the paper's first publisher had.

But a story, nonetheless.

The story of a wanted man.

The story of the law doing a man wrong.

OK, I hope you know I'm joking.

But there is a lesson here: Look at the court date on your traffic ticket before writing it on your calendar.

John Temple can be reached at editor@RockyMountainNews.com or by mail at 100 Gene Amole Way, Denver, CO 80204.

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