Because an El Paso County judge excluded two witnesses who could speak to the defendant’s 30 clean drug tests, a man convicted of possessing methamphetamine will receive a new trial, the Court of Appeals ruled on Thursday.

“As a basic principle, we believe a jury is more likely to credit testimony of other independent witnesses than a defendant denying a ‘knowing’ possession of unlawful substances,” wrote Judge John Daniel Dailey.

Jacob Raynaldo Pineda was shopping for bicycle locks at Walmart in April 2019 when an off-duty Colorado Springs police officer and store security guard saw him put the merchandise in his pocket. They handcuffed Pineda and brought him to the security office, where they searched his backpack. Inside were methamphetamine and three glass pipes.

El Paso County prosecutors changed Pineda with theft as well as possessing a controlled substance and possessing drug paraphernalia. 

Pineda defended himself by arguing he was unaware of the contents of his backpack. He had received a previous drug conviction but since underwent treatment and had not used methamphetamine since. Pineda insisted he overlooked the items in the backpack when ridding himself of old narcotics.

“My heart’s pumping,” Pineda testified about the moment when the search revealed the methamphetamine. “Initially I was confused, but then realized what he was showing me. I couldn’t believe it. It’s just the last thing I was expecting.”

A jury convicted Pineda, but he appealed, arguing the trial court should have admitted evidence showing one year of negative drug test results that corroborated his defense.

At the beginning of the trial, the prosecution attempted to block two witnesses who could speak to Pineda’s drug tests, saying that such testimony was irrelevant and would confuse the jury. The district court judge agreed, explaining that “lack of use doesn’t show that he didn’t possess.”

During oral argument before the appeals court, Heather Wong, representing Pineda, argued that even though Pineda himself testified to his lack of use, “the jury would have heard independent evidence where the strength of the evidence did not depend on Mr. Pineda’s credibility as a witness.”

The three-member panel of the Court of Appeals observed that the prosecution’s charges against Pineda did not require proof he used drugs. But they were sympathetic to Pineda’s contention that the fact he did not use was relevant to proving whether he knowingly possessed.

“Significantly, only 1.73 grams of methamphetamine were found in the backpack,” wrote Dailey in the court’s opinion. “This amount is consistent with possession of the drug for personal use, not possession of the drug with intent to distribute it to others.”

The judges agreed the evidence from Pineda’s drug tests would lend itself toward the defendant’s version of events. Dailey dismissed the prosecution’s argument that jurors may have been confused into thinking they could not convict Pineda unless he was an active drug user.

Further, the panel concluded that because the evidence against Pineda was not “overwhelming in nature,” the trial court’s error likely affected the jury’s verdict. The exclusion of the clean drug tests also gave rise to another error, in which the prosecution characterized Pineda as a “drug addict,” even though the tests showed otherwise.

“Despite knowing of independent evidence corroborating Pineda’s testimony of successful drug rehabilitation that went unconsidered by the jury,” wrote Dailey, “the prosecution improperly summed up its theory of Pineda’s guilt by saying Pineda’s ‘a drug addict. Drug addicts carry drugs with them, and that’s what happened here.’”

At oral argument, Judge Craig R. Welling quizzed the representative from the attorney general’s office about about why Pineda’s drug tests were irrelevant at the same time the prosecutor made “the argument in closing that ‘this is what we expect of a drug addict.'”

“I think the prosecutor’s statement at closing was certainly inartful,” conceded attorney Daniel Rheiner.

“The problem I have is this,” continued Judge Matthew D. Grove, the third member of the panel. If Pineda’s own testimony about his nonuse was permissible at trial, “I have trouble seeing how evidence that corroborated that testimony would be irrelevant.”

Rheiner believed the trial court judge was simply giving leeway to Pineda in telling his story.

The appellate court reversed Pineda’s two drug-related convictions. A spokesperson for the Fourth Judicial District Attorney’s Office indicated it was possible, but not likely, that prosecutors would seek to retry Pineda on the drug crimes.

The case is People v. Pineda.