Justia Colorado Supreme Court Opinion Summaries

In this case, defendant Joseph James Tippet was initially charged with first-degree murder for allegedly shooting and killing his father. However, due to a series of discovery violations by the Eleventh Judicial District Attorney's Office, Tippet's charge was reduced to second-degree murder by the district court as a deterrent sanction. The Supreme Court of the State of Colorado was asked to review this decision.The People (prosecution) had a history of neglecting their discovery obligations, leading to multiple discovery violations in Tippet's case and others. Despite several warnings from various judges, the District Attorney's Office continued to neglect its discovery obligations. As a result, Tippet's defense counsel was unable to effectively prepare for his preliminary hearing.The Supreme Court held that the district court did not abuse its discretion by reducing Tippet's charge as a sanction for the District Attorney's Office's consistent neglect of its discovery obligations. The court emphasized the importance of the discovery process in advancing the search for truth and protecting the integrity of the truth-finding process. The court affirmed the sanction as a necessary deterrent to encourage the District Attorney's Office to modify its discovery practices. The court also rejected the People's argument that the district court lacked the authority to reduce the charge as a discovery sanction, explaining that the decision to impose sanctions for discovery violations was within the court's discretion.In conclusion, the court discharged the rule to show cause, upholding the district court's decision to reduce Tippet's charge from first-degree murder to second-degree murder as a deterrent sanction for the District Attorney's Office's discovery violations. View "People v. Tippet" on Justia Law

On November 18, 2022, Ashleigh Walthour drove her car off a snowy road into some trees. She ran the four or five blocks to her home and called the Aurora Police Department. When the police arrived at Walthour’s home to speak with her, she smelled like alcohol and had slurred speech, dilated pupils, and bloodshot eyes. She admitted to having consumed a shooter of Jack Daniels and was unable to perform voluntary roadside maneuvers. Walthour was arrested and taken to the Aurora City Jail, where she consented to a blood test. The police submitted Walthour’s blood sample to the CBI for processing on November 23. Walthour appeared in court for the first time on January 6, 2023. At that hearing, she notified the court that she would seek the assistance of the Public Defender’s Office. The court set a second hearing for February 6. However, at the second hearing, Walthour explained that she had not qualified for a public defender and would be representing herself. At the same hearing, the State said it had not yet received the blood test results from the CBI but that they “should” have the results “hopefully within the next week or two.” The court set a third pretrial conference for March 7 and directed the prosecution to disclose the test results by February 28 at 5 p.m. The prosecutor did not have any test results to disclose on that date. The trial court announced that it would suppress blood alcohol test results when no trial had been set and the prosecution had not yet received the results of the test from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation (“CBI”). A day later, on March 8, the prosecutor received the blood test results from the CBI. The Colorado Supreme Court found Colorado Rule of Criminal Procedure 16(I)(b)(3), which required prosecutors to disclose the results of scientific exams such as blood alcohol tests to defendants “as soon as practicable but not later than [thirty-five] days before trial,” did not support the trial court's preemptive suppression. The matter was remanded to the trial court for further proceedings. View "Colorado v. Walthour" on Justia Law

Two months after an apparent arson left five people dead, the Denver Police Department (“DPD”) had no suspects. They employed an unconventional investigative technique: a “reverse-keyword warrant.” Google disclosed to DPD a list that included five Colorado internet protocol (“IP”) addresses associated with devices that had searched for the location of the fire in a roughly two-week period before it occurred. Based in part on this information, law enforcement eventually charged Gavin Seymour and two others with multiple counts of first degree murder. Seymour moved to suppress the fruit of the warrant, arguing that it lacked probable cause and particularity. The trial court denied Seymour’s suppression motion. The Colorado Supreme Court affirmed, finding: (1) under the Colorado Constitution, Seymour had a constitutionally protected privacy interest in his Google search history even when revealed only in connection with his IP address and not his name and that, under both the Colorado Constitution and the Fourth Amendment, he also had a constitutionally protected possessory interest in that same history; (2) Seymour’s Google search history implicated his right to freedom of expression; (3) the warrant at issue adequately particularized the place to be searched and the things to be seized; (4) the warrant required individualized probable cause and that its absence here rendered the warrant constitutionally defective; and (5) law enforcement obtained and executed the warrant in good faith, so the evidence shouldn’t be suppressed under the exclusionary rule. "At every step, law enforcement acted reasonably to carry out a novel search in a constitutional manner. Suppressing the evidence here wouldn’t deter police misconduct." View "Colorado v. Seymour" on Justia Law

Charles Dorsey was convicted in 1997 of criminal attempt to commit sexual assault in the second degree. As a result, Dorsey was required to register as a sex offender, which he did. Dorsey was obligated to re-register as a sex offender every year. In 2010, Dorsey was charged with a class 6 felony for failure to register as a sex offender. He ultimately pled guilty to a class 1 misdemeanor failure-to-register offense. Dorsey failed to re-register as a sex offender for a second time in 2017. This time, the matter proceeded to a jury trial. The trial court reasoned the prior-conviction provision of subsection (2)(a) was a sentence enhancer that could be proved to the judge in the event of a conviction, not an element of the offense that had to be proved to the jury. After the jury found Dorsey guilty of the substantive charge, the trial court ruled, at the sentencing hearing, that the State had proved the fact of his prior conviction by a preponderance of the evidence. Consequently, it entered a judgment of conviction on a class 5 felony. The Colorado Supreme Court concurred that the legislature intended to make the fact of a prior conviction a sentence enhancer, and that the Constitution did not require the fact of a prior conviction to be proved to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. View "Dorsey v. Colorado" on Justia Law

Pursuant to a request from Lakewood Animal Control, a deputy with the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office (“LCSO”), conducted a welfare check on the animals at Constance Caswell’s residential property in Limon, Colorado, on March 15, 2016. Approximately two weeks later, LCSO deputies executed a search warrant at Caswell’s property. Based on the deputies’ search, the State filed a complaint charging Caswell with forty-three class 6 felony counts of cruelty to animals. Cruelty to animals was generally a class 1 misdemeanor, § 18-9-202(2)(a), but pursuant to subsection (2)(b)(I) of the statute, it was a class 6 felony if the defendant had a prior conviction for that crime. Each of the counts brought against Caswell identified her prior cruelty-to-animals conviction as a fact that elevated the classification of the charge from a misdemeanor to a felony and enhanced the applicable sentence. Before trial, defense counsel moved for bifurcation to prevent the jury from hearing about his client’s prior conviction for cruelty to animals. The trial court denied the motion as moot, however, ruling that the fact of a prior conviction was a sentence enhancer, not an element of the crime, which meant that it didn’t have to be proved to the jury beyond a reasonable doubt. The jury found Caswell guilty of all forty-three counts. During the sentencing hearing, Caswell conceded that she had previously been convicted of cruelty to animals. The trial court accordingly entered forty-three class 6 felony convictions. It then sentenced Caswell to eight years of probation, forty-three days in jail, and forty-seven days of in-home detention. The Colorado Supreme Court held that where, as was here, a cruelty-to-animals (second or subsequent offense) case (1) includes notice in the charging document of the prior conviction for cruelty to animals and (2) is treated as a felony throughout the proceedings—including in terms of its prosecution in district court (not county court), the right to a preliminary hearing (if eligible), the number of peremptory challenges, and the number of jurors - the Sixth Amendment doesn’t require that the misdemeanor - felony transforming fact in subsection (2)(b)(I) be proved to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. "In sum, there was no error, much less plain error, here. Caswell’s right to a jury trial under the Colorado Constitution was not violated." View "Caswell v. Colorado" on Justia Law

Petitioner Delano Medina pleaded guilty to felony menacing even though he maintained his innocence of that charge. He did so in exchange for the dismissal of several other criminal cases. The trial court found that Medina’s plea was voluntary, knowing, and intelligent. But because Medina agreed to waive the establishment of a factual basis for menacing under Crim. P. 11(b)(6), the trial court did not make a finding as to whether strong evidence of Medina’s actual guilt existed. Medina later moved to withdraw his plea as violative of due process, arguing that a defendant cannot waive proof of a factual basis when entering an "Alford" plea. The postconviction court denied his motion, and a division of the court of appeals affirmed. The issue this case presented for the Colorado Supreme Court's review was whether an Alford plea required a trial court to make a finding of strong evidence of actual guilt to pass constitutional muster. The Court found no such requirement, rather, holding that the establishment of a factual basis for the charge under Crim. P. 11(b)(6), provided that the plea is voluntary, knowing, and intelligent. The Court therefore affirmed the division’s judgment, albeit on slightly different grounds. View "Medina v. Colorado" on Justia Law

Thomas Mitchell was driving when a flat tire forced him to stop in the right-hand lane of traffic. While standing behind his car and removing items from his trunk, another driver, Eli White, struck him, pinning him between the two cars and severing his legs. A blood sample consensually provided by White at the scene of the crash later revealed the presence of tetrahydrocannabinol (“THC”) in an amount seven times that which, under Colorado law, gives rise to a permissible inference that a person was driving under the influence (“DUI”) of one or more drugs. White was charged with class 4 felony DUI, and class 1 misdemeanor careless driving. White sought to suppress the results of the blood test, arguing, as relevant here, that by the time the officers requested a blood sample from him, his investigatory stop had turned into an arrest that was unsupported by probable cause. Following an evidentiary hearing, the district court granted the motion, finding that when the officers collected the blood sample from White, they lacked any indicia of drug intoxication and had already determined that they had no more questions for him and that the cause of the collision was his distraction from the road as he attempted to adjust the car’s climate control features. Therefore, the court concluded the officers' detention of White for the purpose of obtaining his consent for a blood sample was unconstitutional. And because the court believed that White’s consent was not sufficiently attenuated from what it viewed as his illegal arrest, it found that his consent was invalid. The State then brought an interlocutory appeal. The Colorado Supreme Court reversed, finding the officers asked White if he would consent to a blood draw about thirty minutes into their investigation. "Further, there were substantial delays caused by White’s requests to consult with his mother about the possibility of providing a blood sample. The officers accommodated White’s requests and allowed him to speak with his mother by phone and, once she arrived on the scene, in person." Under the circumstances present, the Supreme Court held the officers did not exceed the scope and character of the investigatory stop so as to transform it into an arrest. And because the officers did not unreasonably detain White, his consent to provide a blood sample was not rendered invalid. View "Colorado v. White" on Justia Law

Defendant-appellant Rafael Garcia murdered his estranged wife’s neighbor in Palisade, Colorado. He immediately fled to Mexico. After unsuccessfully seeking his extradition back to Colorado, the District Attorney’s Office compiled a casebook on the crime and sent it to Mexican authorities. In 2009, Garcia was tried for the murder in Mexico, and was acquitted in that jurisdiction. When he returned to Colorado in 2016, he was immediately arrested, tried for murder and convicted. Garcia argued he should not have been tried for the murder in Colorado because he was acquitted in Mexico. Specifically, he argued the second prosecution violated his Fifth Amendment right against double jeopardy. In the alternative, he argued Colorado statutory law limiting the “dual sovereignty” doctrine applied to bar prosecution in Colorado after acquittal in another country. The Colorado Supreme Court rejected these claims, concluding that under the United States Constitution and Colorado state law, Mesa County was entitled to prosecute Garcia despite his earlier prosecution and acquittal in Mexico. View "Garcia v. Colorado" on Justia Law

The common law prohibited anyone with a “direct pecuniary or proprietary interest” in the outcome of a case, including a party, from testifying. Given the direct-interest doctrine, courts also customarily precluded a party’s self-serving hearsay statements. The direct-interest doctrine was abrogated by statue throughout the country, however, Colorado law had no per se rule excluding a self-serving hearsay statement by a defendant. Instead, the Colorado Supreme Court held that, like any other hearsay statement, a defendant’s self-serving hearsay may be admissible if it satisfies a hearsay-rule exception in the Colorado Rules of Evidence. In this case, the district court determined that a hearsay statement by the accused, Jacob Vanderpauye, was automatically inadmissible because it was self-serving. In the alternative, it found that Vanderpauye’s hearsay statement did not meet the excited utterance exception to the hearsay rule. A division of the court of appeals disagreed on both fronts and reversed the judgment of conviction. To this, the Supreme Court affirmed: (1) the self-serving nature of Vanderpauye’s hearsay statement didn’t render the statement automatically inadmissible; (2) the statement, though self-serving, fit within the scope of the excited utterance exception because it was a spontaneous reaction by Vanderpauye to a startling event that rendered his normal reflective thought processes inoperative; and (3) the district court’s error in excluding the statement was not harmless. The case was returned to the district court for a new trial. View "Colorado v. Vanderpauye" on Justia Law

The State charged Jerrelle Smith with first degree, capital murder. Pertinent here, the State of Colorado statutorily abolished the death penalty for crimes charged on or after July 1, 2020. The Colorado Supreme Court determined the trial court abused its discretion when it treated Smith’s charge of first degree murder as a capital offense, then denied Smith’s request for bail. View "Colorado v. Smith" on Justia Law