Seventeenth Judicial District - Adams County Court Judge
Honorable Sabino E. Romano
Retention Year: 2010
Recommendation: Retain
Reports:
Need an accessible PDF Document version?
Please click on the link below and email our staff
The Seventeenth Judicial District Commission on Judicial Performance unanimously recommends that Judge Sabino E. Romano BE RETAINED.
Judge Romano was appointed as an Adams County Judge by Governor Richard Lamm in 1986, and has now served in that position for more than 24 years. Prior to his appointment, Judge Romano was a lawyer in private practice and then in 1983, he was named a County Court Magistrate in the Arapahoe County Court. During his subsequent tenure in Adams County, Judge Romano has handled the full variety of County Court cases. In this last term, however, Judge Romano has handled exclusively civil and small claims cases. He is the only county court judge assigned to the civil docket in Adams County Court. That docket encompasses more than 32,000 civil and small claims cases per year.
In reviewing Judge Romano’s work over the last four years, the Commission was particularly impressed with the judge’s demeanor toward litigants and others in the judicial system. It is obvious that the judge genuinely cares for the people in his court. The Commission also was favorably impressed by Judge Romano’s ability to communicate with litigants who often do not have legal representation, even while the judge has been able to maintain the efficiency necessary to handle his court’s overwhelming caseload. The Commission’s assessment is based on extensive research regarding the judge, including a professional survey of attorneys and others who have appeared in his court, a personal interview with the judge, the judge’s own written self-evaluation, copies of decisions rendered by the judge, case-processing statistics, and personal observations of the judge in his courtroom.
In connection with the Commission’s survey for this election cycle, Judge Romano received significantly above-average ratings from attorneys, rating 12 percentage points above the state-wide average among all County Court judges for his total 99% retention recommendation, versus just 1% of the attorneys responding to the survey recommending “somewhat” that he not be retained.
Of all attorneys surveyed about retention, 99% recommended to retain, 1% not to retain and 0% expressed no opinion. Of all non-attorneys surveyed about retention, 60% recommended to retain, 26% not to retain and 13% expressed no opinion. Excluding those who had no opinion, 69% recommended to retain and 30% not to retain. (These percentages may not total 100% due to rounding.) The sample size for this non-attorney response pool, however, with just 15 respondents, and 13% of those respondents were undecided. As a result, the retention recommendations from the non-attorney sample are not reliable as a measurement of general non-attorney assessment of Judge Romano’s performance. It is the Commission’s unanimous recommendation to retain Judge Sabino E. Romano.