People v. Hatfield.
No. 25PDJ76. 12/9/2025. Stipulation to Discipline.
February 1, 2026
The Presiding Disciplinary Judge approved the parties’ stipulation to discipline and suspended Christian A. Hatfield (attorney registration number 44136) for six months, all to be stayed upon Hatfield’s successful completion of a two-year period of probation, with conditions. The probation took effect on January 13, 2026.
In 2023, Hatfield was appointed as district attorney in Colorado’s 22nd Judicial District. Hatfield and a staff member of the district attorney’s office disagreed about how the office should operate. Around December 2024, Hatfield texted the staff member after business hours, calling the office a “pile of steaming diarrhea and hatred.” He also remarked that there was nothing another worker “can do to fix the seething hatred,” adding: “All he can do is ask for mercy, as your husband must do, childless. It will go on and on without surcease or sorrow and then nothing. Don’t tell them. Without children or hope and with hearts full of hate, there is nothing. Not even death will make it better. Only tiny lives, full of tiny resentments nobody cares about in Cortez, Colorado. You cultivate them; but you know. There is nothing to love, ever. Those who don’t understand loving our children all day have nothing, just judgment and emptiness.” This message caused the staff member emotional harm and violated Colo. RPC 8.4(h) (providing that it is professional misconduct for a lawyer to engage in any conduct that directly, intentionally, and wrongfully harms others and that adversely reflects on the lawyer’s fitness to practice law).
In another matter, Hatfield prosecuted a case involving felony charges in late 2023 and appeared at a hearing on the defendant’s motion to suppress. The defense argued that law enforcement did not have the right to seize or search the defendant’s phone, as the warrant listed an address different from the residence that was searched, and played part of a body cam video. Hatfield did not rebut the defense or rehabilitate the law enforcement officer who was being questioned, including by playing or introducing the full body camera recording of the conversation between the officer and the defendant. The evidence was suppressed, and Hatfield dismissed the charges. Later, another prosecutor unsuccessfully moved the judge to reconsider, making several references to additional evidence available in the body camera video, which Hatfield failed to present at the suppression hearing. Through this conduct, Hatfield violated Colo. RPC 1.3 (a lawyer must act with reasonable diligence and promptness when representing a client).
Finally, before Hatfield became a district attorney, he represented a criminal defendant in a 2022 case. After Hatfield assumed the role of district attorney, a special prosecutor handled the defendant’s case. In January 2025, active negotiations were underway involving a potential global resolution of multiple cases. One of the matters was a revocation of probation in the 2022 case. Hatfield was included in emails about the negotiations, and he stated in an email “I’m fine with that offer . . .” The probation revocation in the 2022 case was included in the global resolution. Hatfield thus approved or ratified a plea offer extended to his former client that was substantially related to his prior representation, violating Colo. RPC 1.9(a) (a lawyer who has formerly represented a client in a matter shall not later represent another person in the same or a substantially related matter in which that person’s interests are materially adverse to those of the former client unless the former client gives written informed consent).