REPORT OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL OF COLORADO. STATE OF COLORADO, ATTORNEY GENERAL'S OFFICE, DENVER, COLO., November 29, 1892. To His Excellency, JOHN L. ROUTT, Governor of Colorado. SIR-I beg leave, respectfully, to submit the following report, pursuant to law requiring the incumbent of this office to report to the Governor biennially: 1. The rapid growth and material development of this State, the consequently necessary increase, from time to time, of the number of district and other subordinate courts, the creation by the last General Assembly of an additional appellate court to facilitate the disposition of the multiplying causes for review by appellate jurisdiction, are facts which forcibly suggest the increasing importance and onerous character of the duties pertaining to this office. 2. In addition to the duties named, numerous equally important responsibilities are imposed upon the Attorney General, as a member of different boards which are created by the Constitution and statutes, of which the principal are, the State Board of Land Commissioners, the State Board of Equalization, and the State Board of Education. The Constitution vests in the first-named board the sole power to control and dispose of the public lands, and the beneficent purposes for which they were granted to the State, the sacred trust impressed upon them by the terms of both the grant and our State Constitution, requiring that the merits of each of the numerous applications for lease and sale of said lands should be considered and determined, are some of the serious considerations which claim the attention of every conscientious member of said board. The mere mention of the Board of Equalization, which has for its purpose the adjustment of the burdens of taxation, in order that they may be equally borne by all citizens, and that the State government may obtain its necessary revenue, is sufficient to suggest the importance of the duties and magnitude of the responsibilities to be performed and discharged by its members. Your Excellency, as a member with me of each of said boards, is familiar with the exacting nature of the work required of them, and you are sensible of the extent to which all of the people of the State are concerned in its intelligent and faithful performance. It has been unavoidably necessary to devote so much of my time to official duties of this character and other matters, a part of which are hereinafter mentioned, that I have been compelled to leave almost entirely the work of the character first namedthe attendance upon the courts and management of State litigation to my able assistant, Mr. Henry B. Babb, who, I am glad to say, has, in the performance of such duties, uniformly protected and advanced the interests of the people with unexcelled promptness and efficiency. During my entire term of office it has been unnecessary to expend any money in the employment of special counsel in State cases of unusual difficulty and importance, and no part of the appropriation to meet such exigencies, which is under the control of the Governor, has been expended for this purpose. 3. The State litigation mentioned embraces: First The preparation for the appellate courts, by briefs and the argument of cases in which the State is interested, which are brought for review from the lower courts, and suits which are originally brought in said appellate courts. Second-Cases in the district courts to which some State officer is a party and requests the assistance of the Attorney General, or in which the Governor directs the Attorney General to represent the State. Third-Cases in the United States courts and land offices, in which the title or claim of the State to public lands is involved. 4. Pressing duties which were deemed to be of greater importance to the people have prevented this office from appearing in many of the cases of the class last mentioned, and the official integrity of those whom the United States government has appointed to adjudicate such cases has, at times, been the sole protection of the State in the matters in controversy. The greater part of such cases, however, have been those in which the proceedings were chiefly formal in character, and in which the protests of the State, stating the defenses to the applications, respectively, were sufficient to secure a reasonably fair trial. Some of the cases of the class last mentioned, as will appear later on, are of the utmost importance to the State; and in such, the interests of the State have been vigilantly defended. 5. Some idea of other duties of the office is suggested by official opinions, which are hereinafter published, in addition to the two hundred letters, more or less of the same advisory character, which have been written to county and other officers, and many hundreds of letters to other persons. The law prescribing the duties of the office does not require the Attorney General to advise county officials and other persons than the State officials specified in said law; and perhaps a better practice would be to decline to answer inquiries from other persons than those specified, but it is frequently as easy to yield to the inclination to oblige the person seeking information as it is to refuse. 6. In addition to the foregoing, there have been, during my term of office, eighty-eight requisitions from the Governor of this State upon the Governors of other States and Territories, for the extradition of fugitives from justice of this State, and seventy-seven requisitions upon the Governor of this State from the Governors of other States and Territories for the extradition of fugitives, from their respective jurisdictions, found in this State. All papers of this character are referred to the Attorney General, who decides as to their formal sufficiency before the Governor grants or refuses the process requested. It has been, during my administration, and I think for a number of years, the practice of this office to conform to the rules adopted by the Inter-State Extradition Conference, which met in New York city in 1887. The occasion for procuring the extradition, from another State, of escaped criminals, is somewhat infrequent in many parts of the State, and it is not surprising that district attorneys, and sometimes other persons who act without authority, should be unfamiliar with such proceeding, and should not, in case of emergency, at once know what text books to consult for proper legal direction. This has been the cause of great inconvenience State Historical and |