The question of whether a Denver police officer told the truth on the witness stand was not sufficient grounds to overturn the defendant’s convictions, the Court of Appeals decided on Thursday.

A jury convicted Victor Dan Garcia on 12 counts of burglary, attempted burglary and theft for stealing from 11 businesses in the Denver area. Among the evidence was a surveillance video showing Garcia holding a crowbar, the crowbar with Garcia’s DNA behind one of the burglarized businesses, and Garcia’s admission to police that a photo taken from a surveillance video depicted him.

While on the witness stand, Garcia’s attorney questioned Officer David Clough about the report the officer wrote after reviewing surveillance footage at one of the burglary sites. The attorney read Clough’s description of the suspect as bearded, with a mustache and blond hair. Garcia had none of those attributes.

Clough acknowledged the description to be “a mistake. It’s not uncommon to work on two or three reports at the same time or be working on your report and help another officer with their report. And I firmly believe that that line in my statement is something that I observed at another crime scene and just inadvertently put it in my statement.”

The officer added that he disclosed the mistake to the prosecutor the week before the trial. The prosecutor recounted the conversation to the judge, and did not recall Clough labeling the discrepancy a mistake. She said she told him to “think about” where he got the information and “have an answer for the Court or for the defense.”

Denver District Court Judge Shelley I. Gilman admitted the situation was problematic.

“Well, it’s a complicated issue because if he told you that was incorrect, that’s an inconsistent statement,” and should have been given to the defense, she explained. “If he just reaffirmed and now is saying something different, he has just said something absolutely inconsistent with what he told you and now the defense has a right to impeach him on that.”

Garcia’s attorney moved to dismiss all the charges, citing “outrageous government conduct.” Gilman rejected the request, saying that while Clough’s “testimony certainly was suspect,” it was the jury’s responsibility to determine the officer’s credibility.

Instead, Gilman read a lengthy instruction to the jury summarizing the inconsistencies between what Clough allegedly talked about with the prosecutor and what he said on the witness stand.

A three-member panel of the Court of Appeals agreed on Thursday that it was the jury’s responsibility to determine whether Clough had told the truth. Even if he had not, though, his statements did not affect the outcome of the case.

“We are not, by the way, saying he did lie,” wrote Judge John Daniel Dailey in the court’s unpublished opinion. “As neither Officer Clough nor the prosecutor directly accused the other of lying but merely recounted their own memories, it is just as possible that the pair remember the events differently.”

The case is People v. Garcia.