A Douglas County judge improperly instructed a jury how to find a man guilty of motor vehicle theft, prompting the Court of Appeals on Thursday to order a new trial.

In 2018, then-District Court Judge Paul A. King gave jurors an instruction stating they could infer that Jonathan Aron Serrano’s possession of a stolen vehicle following a car theft was sufficient proof that he committed the robbery. But a three-member panel of the Court of Appeals determined the instruction was misleading, did not accurately state the law and placed the burden on Serrano to come up with a plausible explanation.

Serrano was arrested while he was sitting in a Subaru that had been stolen the prior night. He argued during trial that he did not know it was a stolen vehicle. His cousin, Juan Serrano, testified he was the one who stole the Subaru and let Jonathan Serrano “use my car” without telling him it was stolen.

However, a jury found Serrano guilty and he received 20 years in prison.

On appeal, Serrano claimed the instruction King gave the jury lowered the prosecution’s burden of proof. The judge told jurors that “the exclusive possession by the defendant of stolen property recently after an aggravated motor vehicle theft services to create a permissible inference that the defendant took such property.” He continued that such evidence “is sufficient in and of itself to justify finding beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was in fact the person who took the property in the absence of a reasonable explanation to the contrary.”

The Colorado Supreme Court criticized similar instructions in a 1979 decision involving a man convicted of aggravated robbery when he was found to be in possession of a woman’s stolen check. The Court determined such an instruction effectively compelled a jury to find the defendant guilty if his possession of stolen property was recent and unexplained. By making those factors sufficient to justify guilt, it relieved the prosecution of proving its case beyond a reasonable doubt, the justices concluded.

That decision, Wells v. People, established multiple conditions that a jury instruction for unexplained possession of recently-stolen property should include. Among those is an emphasis that the jury can accept or reject the suggestion that unexplained possession of the stolen property indicates guilt.

The instruction King gave, the appellate panel decided, did not inform jurors that they could reject such an inference, and in fact stated the jury could find Serrano guilty by simply accepting it. The judge had also given Serrano the task of offering a “reasonable explanation to the contrary,” when in fact the burden of proof lay with the prosecution.

“Because it is reasonably probable that the erroneous instruction contributed to Serrano’s conviction — perhaps by encouraging the jury to ignore Juan’s confession on the stand,” wrote Judge David J. Richman for the appellate panel, “we reverse the conviction.”

The court ordered a new trial for the charge of aggravated motor vehicle theft, while leaving in tact the guilty verdicts for other related offenses in Serrano’s case.

The case is People v. Serrano.