Former prosecutor ordered disqualified after incriminating colleague for sexual harassment

A Denver District Attorney’s Office prosecutor who was fired two years ago after framing a colleague for sexual harassment has been ordered disbarred, a Colorado judicial office ruled.

Former prosecutor Yujin Choi pretended to receive text messages, altered her cell phone records and, during the investigation, destroyed her laptop and phone, according to a 26-page ruling by the Office of the Chief Disciplinary Judge of the Supreme Court of Colorado published December 31. .

The office’s ruling said Ms. Choi’s fabrication of false messages reflects negatively on her ability to practice because it undermines the pursuit of truth, the very foundation on which our justice system rests.

He added that “deception within the ranks of prosecutors, whatever its form, poses an even greater danger of eroding public confidence in the legal system and its professionals.”

The disqualification will take effect next month, although Choi can appeal the decision.

Ms. Choi’s case work was later found to be in “excellent order,” with no evidence of fabrications, the district attorney’s office said.

Ms. Choi was a relatively new lawyer who was rising rapidly in the prosecutor’s office. While attending law school at the University of Denver, he interned in the district attorney’s office and the State Attorney General’s Office. He joined the district attorney’s office in May 2019, after graduating from law school in December 2018.

She was hired as a county court prosecutor and promoted in March 2020 to the behavioral health unit, which processes felony drug possession offenses, alcohol and drug-related traffic violations, and evaluates eligibility for courts and programs. of treatment.

At the end of the year, she was assigned to work on felony cases in district courts.

Ms. Choi became a deputy prosecutor of the family violence unit in March 2022, where she handled serious domestic violence and child abuse cases.

“Family was the reason I worked so hard,” he said, according to the ruling.

Ms. Choi immigrated with her parents and brother from South Korea when she was 10 years old. She was one of the only Asian American prosecutors in the state, which she found “isolating and exhausting,” according to the ruling.

In 2021, Ms. Choi made her first allegation against Dan Hines, a criminal investigator with the district attorney’s office. She told supervisors that he had made an inappropriate comment to her.

Hines, who joined the bureau in 2019 after spending 10 years in the Army and 20 years in the Pennsylvania State Police, retiring as a troop commander, denied the allegation.

“The investigation was closed as lacking merit,” according to the ruling, but Mr. Hines was moved inside the office and ordered not to contact Ms. Choi.

“I remember the ‘walk of shame’ as I carried my office equipment and personal belongings to my reassigned location,” Hines, 53, said in a telephone interview. “The way people interacted with me changed overnight. I felt like I was a leper in the office.”

In October 2022, Ms. Choi said Mr. Hines sent her four inappropriate text messages. While he provided screenshots of the messages, questions quickly arose about their authenticity.

The first text message had a timestamp of about 40 minutes after Ms. Choi had already reported it to her superiors, according to the ruling.

She said she did not want a formal investigation and did not cooperate with it, according to the ruling, but prosecutors felt obligated to move forward with the investigation.

When confronted with the new accusations, Hines immediately demanded a polygraph test and offered his phone for inspection. A forensic search of his phone showed no communication between his number and Ms. Choi’s, according to the ruling.

The investigation further revealed that Ms. Choi had sent inappropriate text messages to herself. Additionally, he changed the name on his phone to make it appear that Mr. Hines was the one who sent them.

The investigation found that Ms. Choi downloaded and altered a spreadsheet containing her Verizon message logs before providing those logs to investigators.

The weekend before her phone and laptop were examined for evidence of Mr. Hines’ alleged misconduct, Ms. Choi told investigators that her phone had fallen into the bathtub after she take a bath and put his phone on a tray.

He said he dried it right away but found it didn’t work. He then went to his desk to make a video call to a colleague, according to the ruling. After the call, still panicking about his phone, he knocked over a bottle, spilling water on his laptop and rendering it useless as well.

“I am devastated to have ruined the investigation on my own, but also to have lost all my personal data that was very important to me,” she wrote in an email to investigators, after returning from an Apple Store, where she said she had Tried to recover data on both devices and had bought a new phone.

“In our opinion, this narrative is not plausible,” the court office said, concluding that Ms. Choi had destroyed both electronic devices.

“Unflagging honesty must at all times be the backbone of the legal profession,” the ruling said. “When a lawyer repeatedly employs deception and dishonesty to harm another person, that lawyer corrodes the integrity of the profession and threatens to compromise public confidence in the legal system.”

Phone calls to Ms. Choi and her family were not immediately returned Saturday. His attorneys could not be reached.

Ms. Choi told the disciplinary office that she had not intentionally harmed Mr. Hines because she did not make any formal statements against him until the office forced her to participate in its investigation.

In asking for clemency, she said she was in financial difficulties and had been a lawyer for only a short time. The court’s office noted in its ruling that Ms. Choi’s repeated deception and lack of remorse persuaded her to go beyond suspending her law license and seeking disbarment.

Hines said he was furious at the way the internal investigations were handled and the damage caused to his reputation and his physical and mental health. Last month, he filed a lawsuit against District Attorney Beth McCann, the city and county of Denver, and the prosecutor’s office.

“We believe the investigation was handled appropriately,” Matt Jablow, a spokesman for the Denver District Attorney’s Office, said Saturday.

Jack Begg contributed to the research.