A Denver County Court judge violated ethics rules when he paid a defendant’s $1 bail during an August court hearing, an investigation by the Denver Judicial Discipline Commission found.
Mayor Mike Johnston publicly censured Judge Barry Schwartz on Friday and ordered that the judge serve a one-week suspension without pay.
The judge set a $1 bail for a defendant in a 2016 misdemeanor assault case when she appeared in court in August after failing to appear several times.
When the woman’s attorney indicated that she did not have a dollar, Schwartz asked his court staff for cash. A staff member handed him a dollar, which he passed to the defense attorney, according to the public censure and video of the incident obtained by The Denver Post.
“By personally facilitating the posting of bail for a defendant, the mayor finds that Judge Schwartz compromised the impartiality, integrity and independence of the judiciary,” the two-page censure reads. “Regardless of the bond amount, and although Judge Schwartz denies any favoritism towards the defense or antipathy to the prosecution, Judge Schwartz’s conduct openly favored the defendant in open court.”
Schwartz declined to comment Tuesday. His attorney, David Beller, did not immediately return a request for comment.
During the roughly four-minute court hearing in August, public defender Cassandra Weidner told the judge that her client did not have a dollar with which to pay her bail.
“She does not have a dollar on her right now,” Weidner said. “I would ask the court to set a (personal recognizance) bond. But if the court would like to set a $1 bond, I think she can go to an ATM and try and get that to be able to post.”
Schwartz turned away from the microphone and spoke with someone off-screen to his left, the video shows. Then he turned back to the proceedings.
“We have a dollar,” the judge said.
“Oh, great,” Weidner responded. “Thank you, your honor.”
It was not immediately clear why Schwartz did not set the woman’s bail as a personal recognizance bond, which would have allowed her to leave jail without paying any money. No one in the courtroom objected when the judge passed the dollar along, the video shows.
Johnston wrote in the public censure that the woman’s case was a “serious concern” because she was charged with assault and skipped mandatory court appearances four different times.
“I hear every day from Denverites that they expect our laws to be enforced,” the mayor wrote. “It is a conviction I share and expect to be honored by members of the judiciary.”
Schwartz was appointed as a county court judge in 2017. A 2024 evaluation by the Office of Judicial Performance Evaluation noted that he was known as a “fair, kind and respectful judge,” and that he was “working to ensure that his empathy for defendants does not convey favoritism.”
