Seventh Judicial District Attorney Seth Ryan announced on Monday he’s resigning from his position effective Oct. 31, days before he would have won re-election.

The Republican incumbent was running unopposed for his second term in office and was on the ballot for the Nov. 5 general election. Ryan sent the announcement in an email to others on Monday morning, citing several factors in his decision to step down, including a toll on his physical and mental health.

Process for filling vacancy

His resignation sets in motion a potentially complicated procedure for filling his position. Ryan filed a petition to withdraw from the election on Tuesday, creating a vacancy for the election, according to Jack Todd, a spokesman for the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office.

Because Ryan resigned between the June primary and the first day ballots will be mailed — Oct. 11 — a state Republican Party vacancy committee may appoint his replacement on the ballot for the election, according to Todd. Because Ryan was the only candidate, that person would be elected. State law indicates if the vacancy committee fails to “timely certify” a replacement for Ryan, the state party chairperson must appoint a replacement within seven days and certify the appointment to the secretary of state. That person would fill the seat until the next general election.

A representative of the state Republican Party told the Plaindealer on Tuesday the party has a vacancy committee for the Seventh Judicial District, but wasn’t sure what the next step might be. At this time, there is also a dispute over the state party chairmanship. If the party chooses someone for the vacancy on the ballot, any vote that is cast for Ryan will automatically transfer to that person.

But there’s another process outlined in state law for filling a vacant position, which will happen after Ryan’s last day on the job, Oct. 31. That falls to the governor to make an appointment, using an advisory committee.

It’s not clear at this time which process will be used to fill Ryan’s position, either for the remainder of his term in office (until January) or until the next general election in 2026.

Reasons for resignation

Ryan focused most of his resignation announcement on a lack of resources for his office and difficulty attracting and retaining qualified attorneys to work in the Seventh Judicial District. He specifically mentioned the pandemic and “political aftermath of current events” as reasons for resigning.

Ryan did not return a message seeking comment for this story.

However, his office posted on its website an article published in January by the American Bar Association documenting vacancies in prosecutors’ offices and attributing the cause to issues including the “George Floyd effect,” and a backlog in cases from the pandemic. The article cited a situation in the 17th Judicial District, located in Adams and Broomfield counties, where the district attorney still had 10 positions open in 2022, after receiving only a few applications.

Ryan talked specifically about difficulties with hiring and attracting talent in his resignation, but did not mention that two of his top deputy district attorneys had recently decided to leave their positions.

“Over the past four years, the District Attorney’s Office has had an average attorney turnover rate of 32% per year with a turnover rate of 56% in 2024,” he wrote.

Ryan said he can’t keep up with court schedules and demands across the 10,000-squaremile district, which covers Montrose, Delta, Ouray, San Miguel, Gunnison and Hinsdale counties. He cited the challenges as “circumstances beyond my control.”

Ryan attended the Ouray County Republican Party assembly in March and announced his intention to run for re-election. He spent several minutes at that gathering discussing the challenges of his job and touting long prison sentences he had secured in violent felony cases during his first four years in office.

In a video of a campaign speech from March, given at the San Miguel County assembly in Norwood, he said there has been an attack on prosecutors.

“There is a woke agenda out there that is against law and order and they’re really making it hard to be a prosecutor,” he said. He also accused two law schools in Colorado – at the University of Colorado and University of Denver – of “actively discouraging people from being prosecutors.”

He also talked about two other district attorneys who quit recently and left their communities hanging, including a situation where a district attorney became a judge and the prosecutor’s office suffered.

He said he worked hard to make sure that wouldn’t happen in this judicial district.

“Over the past three years, my mantra has been never surrender, never give up,” he said.

The video was removed from YouTube on Tuesday night after Ryan closed his account.

Public criticism

Ryan and his office have been publicly criticized for their handling of a trio of cases in Ouray County in which a 17-year-old girl alleged she was sexually assaulted by three men at the home of then-Ouray Police Chief Jeff Wood last year. The cases of two men, Ashton Whittington and Gabriel Trujillo, are in limbo while the Colorado Supreme Court weighs whether to uphold a county court judge’s decision to prohibit prosecutors from introducing key evidence in Whittington’s case.

County Judge Sean Murphy in March barred prosecutors from using the evidence because they failed to turn it over to Whittington’s attorneys in a timely fashion. Ryan’s office appealed the ruling to the state’s high court. According to information presented in May by the state public defender in court, this is just one of numerous cases in which the district attorney’s office has failed to follow state rules requiring the prosecution to provide evidence it plans to use in a case to the defense. One defense attorney for one of the co-defendants in the case, Gabriel Trujillo, accused the district attorney’s office of “conscious disregard for the rules” and asked for the case to be dismissed.

According to data on the district attorney’s cases, Ryan’s office has seen an increase in the number of cases dismissed, from 13% of felony cases in 2019 when the previous district attorney was in office to 21% of felony cases so far in 2024. The same trend is occurring with misdemeanor cases – from 22% of misdemeanor cases dismissed in 2019 to 34% so far in 2024. Cases can be dismissed for a variety of reasons – from everything from whether witnesses are cooperative to the strength of evidence in a case to whether judges will allow certain evidence to be presented in court or new evidence coming to light after charges are filed.

According to data from the District Attorney’s office, prosecutors have filed 41 felony cases and 169 misdemeanor cases per attorney in the district in the first half of 2024. During that same time, 45 felony cases and 144 misdemeanor cases were resolved, per prosecutor.

Ryan has worked for the office for 17 years, and ran for the position of district attorney after his predecessor, Dan Hotsenpiller, finished his last two terms in the position. Ryan was the chief deputy district attorney at the time, and he was unopposed in his election bid. He took office in 2020.