Jason Slothouber has spent a lot of time in front of a jury in the past year. As the lead trial counsel representing the People of Colorado in back to back-to-back criminal trials involving the death of Elijah McClain, sleep was in short supply.
“It was the most professionally challenging and also professionally rewarding experience of my life, simultaneously both exhilarating and exhausting,” said Slothouber. “I think that after we finished the third trial it was right before Christmas. I went home and I basically slept until January.”
The trials spanned four months, resulting in the conviction of one police officer and two paramedics. Natalie Hanlon Leh, chief deputy attorney general at the Colorado Attorney General’s Office, wrote to Law Week that Slothouber was outstanding in trial and critical to the success of the investigation and the trials.
“These were challenging cases to prosecute for many reasons – they involved the prosecution of law enforcement and first responders, much of the evidence was from body camera footage and hostile witnesses, the defense cases were vigorous, and they were high profiles with daily reports from media in attendance,” wrote Hanlon Leh. “The back to back schedule was grueling, with straight trial work from September through the Friday before Christmas.”
Even with the challenging aspects of the cases and the grueling schedule, Slothouber found the experience exhilarating.
“When you’re in trial, you’re working 14 to 18 hours a day, and it just never stops. And it’s really exciting because you’re so into it,” said Slothouber. “And being in trial is sort of the modern intellectual version of gladiator combat. You pour your heart and soul into it and everything that you’ve got and you care so much about it. But when you’re doing it for a really long time, it’s just incredibly physically taxing.”
Slothouber was quick to spread the credit for the trial wins, highlighting the teams around him that made it all possible. He praised the teams of lawyers he worked with on all three trials, including the team of trial lawyers from Quinn Emanuel who were working pro bono on one of the cases.
In the other two cases, he emphasized the work from teams in the AG’s Office and the Solicitor General, as well as the appellate lawyers who assisted the team with motions practice and research to make sure they got all the legal issues right.
Slothouber said the paralegals and support staff on this case were critical. He gave a specific shoutout to Sally Ott, the head paralegal on the trial team, who he called a real hero for her work, including all the late-night duties and handling an incredibly complex case.
“The logistics in these three trials, especially coming one right after another, were incredibly challenging,” said Slothouber. “We had over 50,000 pages of discovery in the case, hundreds of exhibits, had to prepare crosses and direct examinations for dozens of experts and dozens and dozens more of individual witnesses between three different trials. Really, if you’re going to do a big trial like that, especially three big trials back to back like that, and you want to have really great trial practice, I think it really requires great teamwork.”
A Predetermined Path
“You know, I really have sort of spent my entire life developing to be a trial lawyer,” said Slothouber. “I think it’s sort of the one thing on this earth that I was put here to do and to do well.”
Slothouber grew up in South Dakota, calling himself Midwestern born and raised. The signs he would become a lawyer were there from early on.
“I was actually reminiscing with my mom over the holidays about how when I was back in high school, and she realized that I had a talent for competitive debate,” Slothouber said. “She sort of sat me down and had the SpiderMan conversation, if you will, with me and the sort of with great power comes great responsibility thing, where if you are good at arguing, good at persuading people, good at bringing people around to your way of thinking that’s important, but it’s important to use those skills with integrity.”
After high school, Slothouber moved to Washington, D.C., where he went to Georgetown University for undergrad. After a few years doing foreign policy work, he made the decision to attend the University of Colorado Law School.
After law school, Slothouber did a federal clerkship before moving to the mountains to become a district attorney and prosecutor. He’s spent the last eight years at the AG’s Office handling high stakes litigation, primarily white collar crime.
Slothouber has tried a lot of big and small cases in his time at the AG’s office, including a $16 million securities fraud case that involved a month-long trial.
Slothouber finds the white collar crime sphere an interesting one, with very complex facts and often highly competent defense counsels.
“I think a lot of people think that white collar cases sort of lack jury appeal, that they can be boring, that they’re just paper chases,” said Slothouber. “And so as a trial lawyer, making those cases interesting and getting the jury passionate about it, getting judges to understand complicated fact patterns, getting juries to understand complicated fact patterns, is something that I find really rewarding as well.”
Preparing the Next Generation
Outside of Slothouber’s trial practice, there are two things he’s particularly passionate about, teaching and mentoring.
Slothouber worked on the Colorado Trial Advocacy Certificate program with other lawyers in his office. The program acts as a certification process for building trial skills. He’s also on the national faculty for the National Association of Attorneys General. For the NAAG role, he travels across the country teaching complex litigation and trial skills to other AG offices.
“It’s great for some of the younger lawyers who come into our office for honing the skills and sort of getting certification for more experienced attorneys, who maybe aren’t in trial specifically that often,” said Slothouber. “They may be really incredible experts in their field of law, but just don’t have that much opportunity to be in front of judges or in front of juries. And it’s just another good skill set for them to build.”
His teaching and mentoring extends to future lawyers and students. He recently taught a white collar crime course at the University of Colorado Law School. On the mentoring side, Slothouber works with the LAW SCHOOL… Yes We Can program and Minds Matter Colorado.
“If you are good at arguing, good at persuading people, good at bringing people around to your way of thinking that’s important, but it’s important to use those skills with integrity.” – Jason Slouthouber, senior assistant attorney general
“100% of the kids who finished the Minds Mentor Program get into college, and 100% of them find scholarships,” said Slothouber. “My mentee in particular, who I am incredibly proud of, overcame some really amazing challenges through her life growing up, including dealing with periods of homelessness, and a really difficult family situation to be the first in her family to go to college. And she’s graduating this spring.”
Slothouber said one of the things he’s most excited about for the future is on the mentoring side of his life.
“It’s so amazing to see young people and their passion, especially for the law. My mentee who I met through Minds Matter, she wants to be a lawyer as well,” said Slothouber. “So she’s actually probably going to be going into the LAW SCHOOL… Yes We Can program here now that she’s graduating. But I think one of the most important things that we can do as lawyers is help develop the next generation of lawyers and just of people.”