The state Supreme Court on Monday announced it will hear a case that raises the question of whether a person’s intent matters in crimes involving solicitation of child prostitutes.

Phillip L. Ross, the defendant, responded to an advertisement for prostitution which read that all girls involved were at least 19 years old. In reality, the two girls with whom he arranged the transaction were under 18. When police arrested him, he told them he believed he was corresponding with adults.

Colorado law states that “it shall be no defense” for a child solicitation charge that a person did not know that a child was under 18, or that they “reasonably believed” the child was at least 18.

The trial court agreed with Ross’s lawyers that the prosecution did not prove that he had an intent to solicit child prostitutes. Accordingly, it dismissed a charge for one of the girls. The judge allowed the solicitation charge for the other girl to go forward, citing that a jury could reasonably determine from her photograph that she was underage.

The jury deadlocked, and the prosecutor for the Denver District Attorney’s office asked for a mistrial declaration.

The court of appeals in a May 2019 opinion sided with Ross over the Denver D.A. Chief Judge Steven L. Bernard wrote that there was “no evidence presented at trial that would have allowed the jury to find that he had solicited her for the purpose of child prostitution.”

The appeals judges unanimously determined that solicitation of a child prostitute is a “specific intent crime,” noting that the prosecution must prove that a defendant’s intent was to arrange for child prostitution in order to forestall him from using the defense that he did not know the child’s age.

The two issues the Supreme Court will consider in the case are whether the court of appeals erred in finding that soliciting a child prostitute required proof of specific intent, and also whether the “requisite mental state for soliciting child prostitution” applies throughout all phases of the crime.

Justice Monica M. Márquez will not participate in the case. Her father, José D.L. Márquez, was one of the three appeals court judges who ruled in the matter.

The case is The People of the State of Colorado v. Phillip L. Ross.

Editor’s note: This story has been corrected to note that Judge José D.L. Márquez, the father of Justice Monica M. Márquez, was on the court of appeals panel.