Because an Arapahoe County Sheriff’s deputy threatened that a pat down would find any hidden drugs, a woman’s admission to possessing cocaine was coercive and therefore inadmissible as evidence, the Court of Appeals decided.

According to court records, a drug investigation team in the sheriff’s office surveilled suspected drug dealer Christopher Robles for months, with undercover officers making multiple purchases from him. Law enforcement tracked Robles’s movements on the day of a scheduled purchase and received an order to arrest him.

Officers made contact after Robles parked at a Target with his girlfriend, Roberta Lynn Lucero, also in the car. The two began walking toward the store, but Deputy Gordon Carroll stopped them in his police car. Although Robles and Lucero complied, they acted nervous, in Carroll’s appraisal.

The deputy cited a broken tail light on Robles’s car and asked to see the registration. As Robles looked for the documentation, Carroll smelled marijuana. Robles denied smoking any, but Carroll became concerned when Robles kept reaching into his pocket, possibly for a weapon.

He ordered them both to step away from the car as a K-9 sniffed the vehicle. Carroll’s dog indicated the presence of drugs on the passenger seat where Lucero had sat, according to records. Initially, Lucero denied having narcotics on her, but, as Caroll later described, he “told her that I was going to have a female deputy come down, do a search of her and we would find the drug[s] if they were on her. She then said yes, I do have some on me.”

Lucero also admitted to having cocaine to the female officer who patted her down, records said. The officer found the drugs in her underwear. Law enforcement discovered more cocaine under the car’s hood.

Arapahoe County prosecutors charged Lucero with possession of a controlled substance. A jury found her guilty, even though the defense sought unsuccessfully to bar the drug evidence and statements from her encounter with Carroll.

The three-member panel of the Court of Appeals first rejected Lucero’s claim that she was in custody and therefore should have received a Miranda warning. However, the judges did note the U.S. and Colorado constitutions require a defendant’s statements to be voluntary to be admitted as evidence.

Among more than a dozen factors, the court weighed whether Lucero was aware of the situation, whether there were any threats against her and whether she was free to leave.

“Here, a numerical tabulation of these factors would seem to favor a conclusion that Lucero’s statement to Deputy Carroll was involuntary,” wrote Judge Christina F. Gomez in an opinion issued on Oct. 29. “She was not fully aware of the situation, as she was initially led to believe this was merely a traffic stop …. Deputy Carroll threatened her with an intrusive search. And the interrogation was coercive given the threatened search.”

A key point in the court’s reasoning was Carroll’s statement that the officer performing the pat down “would find the drug[s]” if Lucero had them. The judges believed Lucero confessed to the drug possession because of the inevitability of officers finding the cocaine.

Concluding the officers did not have probable cause to search Lucero, Gomez wrote that “all the officers had to go on at the time was (1) an alert in the area of the car where Lucero had sat by a dog who was trained to detect legal as well as illegal substances; (2) Lucero’s mere proximity to Robles; and (3) Lucero’s general nervousness.”

The court did not consider those observations together to sufficiently constitute probable cause. As a result, the panel reversed Lucero’s conviction.

“Since the Court of Appeals has determined the evidence must be suppressed, the prosecution cannot retry this case,” said a spokesperson for the 18th Judicial District Attorney on Wednesday.

The case is People v. Lucero.