Erin Ely-Fernandez was the “Peoples Judge” in Pitkin County for 21 years. As the Pitkin County Court Judge from 2000-2021, she presided over 30,000 cases and 60 jury trials.
She offered criminal defendants resources to help solve their problems by creating alliances with professionals in mental health, substance abuse, law enforcement and the judicial system. Her view was that rehabilitation was preferable to incarceration. Showing endless compassion (though she could be firm), she helped create programs such as counseling and support for mental health issues, monitoring abstinence of drug and alcohol abuse, and pretrial services where a team of professionals and counselors work with defendants to get to the root cause of their transgressions.
This diligent work and the compassion shown over many years to create the programs and approaches to responding to violence, harm and abuse resulted in a significant reduction of cases brought before the court, as well as new perspectives and practices adopted by local law enforcement and prosecutors. For example, Pitkin County Health and Human Services partnered with the police department to have a therapist ride along with an officer on 911 calls and dedicated officers are trained in handling people with mental illnesses. She also helped create the Aspen Homeless Shelter to help people get back on their feet and end their homelessness as soon as possible.
Erin arrived in Aspen in 1978, after serving as a white-collar crime prosecutor in South Florida. She had been raised in Venezuela to a Cuban father and an American mother, one of five children. After graduating from Marymount International School in Surrey, England, she did her undergraduate work at Wellesley College, and then followed that with law school at the University of Florida, where she graduated at the age of 22.
In her early days in Aspen, while studying for the Colorado Bar Exam, Erin remembers playing softball on the “Wally’s Wugs” team with coaches Jim True and Mick Ireland. Once a lawyer, she worked for Shellman & Ornitz, then Jon Mulford, then was a partner with several local law firms. She was married to Brian Hazen for 10 years. In 1995, she married John Ely, and children Michael and Julia soon followed. John tragically passed away in 2024.
Board positions at the Waldorf School, the Aspen Homeless Shelter, and Community Health Services as well as gardening, painting and home projects have filled Erin’s free time now that her children are grown.