A man convicted of assaulting a police officer has the right to review the two use-of-force reports against the officer he punched — and whom he accused of fabricating the incident, the Court of Appeals decided on Thursday.

Greeley police officers arrived at an apartment building early on a Sunday in July 2015 after receiving a call of a medical emergency and domestic dispute with the possibility of a gun inside the home. One of the parties to the dispute, Lorenzo Cardenas, Jr., told officers they needed a warrant. However, numerous other occupants of the apartment asked police to come inside for assistance.

Cardenas, identified as “Junior” by the court, pushed two of the officers as they entered and resisted arrest. One officer tased Cardenas as a result. Cardenas’ father, Lorenzo Cardenas-Villescas, Sr., appeared in the hallway and elbowed Sgt. Zach St. Aubyn. The officer tried to pull Cardenas-Villescas away from the others and his son.

Testimonies conflicted between whether Cardenas-Villescas hit Officer Seth Luedtke in the face or not. Cardenas-Villescas alleged some of the officers invented the story to justify Luedtke’s use of force against him and his son.

Weld County prosecutors charged Cardenas-Villescas with two counts of second-degree assault on the police officers. A jury convicted him only of assaulting Luedtke, and he received an eight-year prison sentence.

Because the defendant alleged excessive force against him, his attorney issued a subpoena for the disciplinary records of the officers. Cardenas-Villescas believed the officers’ “honesty and credibility” was an issue. The Greeley Police Department countered that his accusations were vague and Cardenas-Villescas sought information about officers who did not interact with him in the apartment.

Weld County District Judge Thomas J. Quammen sided with Cardenas-Villescas on producing the files of three of the officers, concluding the police department’s argument “would effectively immunize a police officer from ever facing impeachment for a pattern of ongoing bad behavior during the criminal trial of a defendant” were it to succeed. Quammen conducted a closed-door review of St. Aubyn and Luedtke’s files.

Subsequent to the judge’s inspection, Quammen denied the disclosure of the officers’ personnel information. He subsequently ordered further closed-door review for all officers who “placed hands” on Cardenas-Villescas, but only for personnel incidents resulting in discipline. Quammen ultimately decided the defendant needed a “greater showing of need” to inspect the records, and Cardenas-Villescas appealed the lack of review for the latter officers as well as the lack of disclosure for the files of St. Aubyn and Luedtke.

The Colorado Supreme Court has established that police officers have an expectation of privacy for their personnel files, and trial court judges must weigh that confidentiality against the need for disclosure. A related 1983 decision determined a defendant charged with assaulting a police officer may be able to learn whether any complaints of excessive force exist against the officer involved, reasoning that the officers’ credibility is relevant to the case.

To refine the issue further, the Supreme Court later listed the precise factors a trial court must consider to compel the documents from a law enforcement agency. Those include the relevance to the case, the good faith of the request and the need to prepare for trial using those files.

The appeals panel in Cardenas-Villescas’s case agreed that he was allowed to see the file only for Luedtke.

“Because Cardenas-Villescas disputes that he punched Officer Luedtke before Officer Luedtke struck him nine times with his baton, and the principal testimony of the assault was from the officers on the scene, the information was material and relevant to Cardenas-Villescas’s defense,” wrote Judge Sueanna P. Johnson for the three-member panel.

The judges ordered the trial court to hand over Luedtke’s two incident reports to the defense, and allow Cardenas-Villescas the opportunity to argue a “reasonable probability” that the trial would have ended differently if he had access to those records at the time. If the district court decides in the affirmative, it must order a new trial.

Michael Fairhurst, an attorney with Killmer, Lane & Newman, LLP, said that officers’ personnel files, are “relevant to assessing at least their credibility, training, discipline, experience, quality of supervision and motive to testify in a particular way.” In civil cases, he added, such information can form a basis for holding municipalities liable for their training, supervision and discipline of employees.

The panel did not, however, agree with Cardenas-Villescas that he was entitled to view the personnel information of all officers who laid hands on him.

“Some officers were outside the apartment and did not even witness the interactions between Cardenas-Villescas and Sergeant St. Aubyn and Officer Luedtke that led to the assault charges,” Johnson noted. “Instead, he claims that all officers cover for each other and protect one another.”

She believed it would be burdensome to every criminal case to rely on that standard for disclosure. The panel also did not agree with Cardenas-Villescas’s argument that the trial could have changed materially had he been present at a conference with his lawyer early in the trial in which the prosecutor disclosed an unrelated civilian shooting that involved some of the officers in his case. Cardenas-Villescas’ lawyer did not insist on disclosure of the shooting, and Johnson observed it was a “close call” about whether the situation harmed the defendant.

Given that the prosecutor had very little information other than publicly-reported accounts, however, “any questions Cardenas-Villescas would have asked would not have produced any useful information for his case during that hearing,” the panel decided.

The case is People v. Carenas-Villescas.