A detective’s use of an El Paso County defendant’s nickname “on the street” did not prejudice the jury about possible prior criminal behavior, the Colorado Court of Appeals ruled on Thursday.

Police executed a search warrant at Brian Christopher Mackes’ house in 2017 and found firearms, methamphetamine and the meth component ephedrine. A jury convicted him of various drug possession charges.

During the trial, the defense objected to law enforcement officers using Mackes’ street nickname in their testimony, arguing it could imply known criminal activity from Mackes prior to the case at hand.

El Paso County District Judge David A. Gilbert called it “a stretch” that use of the nickname would demonstrate prior police contact. The officers, he said, could have learned the nickname “in many different ways.”

During testimony, a detective testified that “from experience from other detectives [Mackes] is known as [a nickname] on the street.” Gilbert allowed the mention, finding that the detective had not referred to any prior criminal behavior from Mackes and that police could have brought up his nickname in relation to “people around him.”

The three-member appellate panel agreed that the utterance of the nickname did not prejudice the jury.

“Here, the detective did not testify that the ‘other detectives’ arrested, investigated, or surveilled Mackes or his house,” wrote Judge Jaclyn Casey Brown. “As the court noted, the other detectives could have learned about Mackes’s nickname because they were investigating other people around him, such as his girlfriend.”

Brown acknowledged that the detective’s reference to Mackes’ “street name” was lingo that could imply criminal behavior. However, Mackes did not present a sufficient argument for how a street name necessarily implies a person has prior criminal behavior. Nor did the panel find trouble with the prosecutor’s repeated use of the nickname during trial.

“True, the prosecutor and the witnesses continued to refer to Mackes by the nickname throughout the trial, but we have not found any other part of the record that coupled the nickname with any reference to ‘the street’ or other similar implications of possible prior criminal activity,” Brown concluded.

The case is People v. Mackes.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to remove references to the nickname.