Gov. Polis appoints new Boulder County judge

Gov. Jared Polis appointed Thursday a new judge to the Boulder County Court in the 20th Judicial District.

Magistrate Monica Haenselman was chosen to fill the vacancy left by Judge Kristy Martinez, who died in February.

Haenselman has served since 2015 as a district court magistrate in Boulder County, where she worked primarily on criminal, family and juvenile matters.

Prior to her appointment, she was a family court facilitator for nearly nine years in the 20th Judicial District.

Haenselman has also worked as an associate at the law firm LaBuda & Associates, where she specialized in domestic relations law, and the Chicago-based law firm Sonnenschien Nath & Rosenthal, where she specialized in general commercial litigation and employment law.

Haenselman graduated from the University of Colorado in 1985 and the Georgetown University Law center in 1991. 

As a new county judge, Haenselman’s initial term of office is a provisional two years, and then she must run for election. If approved by voters, she will have a term of four years.

Judge Martinez died in late February of an unspecified illness. She served as the first full-time director of the University of Colorado Law School’s Korey Wise Innocence Project, and the university awarded her the honorary Order of the Coif for her contributions to the legal profession. In a tribute posted after her death, the university said Judge Martinez was known for “her integrity, fairness and commitment to justice.”