Because an Arapahoe County judge failed to order two out-of-context statements to be redacted from the defendant’s interrogation video, the jury potentially received a mistaken impression about his guilt, the Court of Appeals decided on Thursday in reversing the felony murder conviction.

A three-judge panel ordered a new trial for David Alberto Garcia for his role in an Aurora motel room shooting on Thanksgiving 2016. Although Garcia was not the person who shot Eduardo Hernandez-Zuniga, 45, a jury convicted him of felony murder in March 2018. A person commits felony murder if he causes a death while committing a felony – in Garcia’s case, burglary.

Garcia received a life sentence in prison.

At issue in his appeal was an 85-minute video of Garcia’s interrogation, when police arrested him two days after Hernandez-Zuniga’s murder. Detectives suspected Garcia was involved in a total of four shootings, including one the prior day in which Garcia killed a man during a road rage incident. (Garcia, whose criminal record is substantial, would plead guilty to that crime.)

The detectives began by telling Garcia he was in custody on an assault warrant from two-and-a-half weeks prior. Garcia then referenced a Nov. 10 shooting at the Stone nightclub in Denver.

“Yeah, well one of my family members kept telling me, ya know ‘turn yourself in, turn yourself in,'” Garcia told the detectives. “I don’t like to turn myself in, ya know that. I’m like, there’s reasons why I did it, but still it doesn’t justify…ya know, the action that happened….I just wanted to be with my family, ya know, my wife and my son, ya know?…I’m jus’ scared ya know to leave them.”

Later in the interview, Garcia recalled telling another suspect in the Hernandez-Zuniga murder: “I’m as deep as you are with that [stuff] at Stone.”

District Court Judge Ben L. Leutwyler III agreed to redact more than a dozen statements from the video at Garcia’s request. Although there were no other references to the Stone shooting, the judge allowed the two sets of statements about Garcia turning himself in and being “as deep as you are” to remain in the video shown to the jury.

This was problematic to the Court of Appeals because the jury’s understanding was that Garcia’s interrogation pertained to the Aurora motel murder. Out of context, the evidence appeared as if Garcia was thinking of turning himself in for that crime, and not any other.

“[T]he only context through which the jury could view Garcia’s statement was that (1) the interview took place three days after the Aurora shooting, (2) Garcia was discussing an incident that took place recently, and (3) the only incident the officers were investigating was the Aurora shooting,” wrote Judge Ted C. Tow III in the appellate panel’s June 24 opinion. “The effect of the redactions, therefore, created a misimpression that Garcia’s statement was in reference to the Aurora shooting.”

The attorney general’s office had argued the unredacted statements actually reflected well on Garcia by “demonstrating positive pro-social qualities, indicating both that he desired to cooperate with the police and that he desired to care for his family.” The appellate panel rejected that interpretation.

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While Tow acknowledged the statements comprised only a few seconds of a lengthy interrogation video, jurors would have reasonably seen them as admissions of guilt in the Aurora crime, not knowing Garcia was talking about another incident entirely. 

The case is People v. Garcia.