A Mesa County man was under arrest at the time officers placed him in handcuffs, meaning his conduct after that point could not be used against him to prove he was guilty of resisting arrest, the state Supreme Court decided Monday.

The ruling reverses the state’s second-highest court, which determined that because Weston Jefferson Thomas went limp after being handcuffed and forced sheriff’s deputies to carry him to the patrol car, “he nonetheless resisted the completion of the arrest in a manner that created a substantial risk of injury to the officers.”

Under Colorado law, a person resists arrest when they use physical force or threaten violence to prevent a law enforcement officer from carrying out an arrest. Alternatively, they are guilty if they use “any other means” that creates a substantial risk of harm to the officer.

On March 6, 2015, Thomas’ 78-year-old landlady had received complaints about noise. She went to his trailer, which he parked on her property, to try to quiet him down. The victim later testified that Thomas grabbed her by the neck, slammed her against a surface and yelled she “didn’t belong in this world.” A neighbor came to the victim’s aid.

The two deputies who arrived arrested Thomas for assault on an at-risk, meaning elderly, person. When they tried to handcuff him, Thomas pulled his arms away at first, but the officers succeeded in cuffing him.

That is when Thomas reportedly “went limp,” requiring the deputies to help him travel approximately 20 feet to the patrol car. The terrain they covered included debris, broken glass, television sets and microwaves. A jury convicted him of resisting arrest and the Court of Appeals last year upheld the conviction, reasoning that Thomas’ conduct, coupled with the hazardous environment, would have created a substantial risk to the deputies.

On appeal to the Supreme Court, the government argued Thomas was only under arrest once he was secured in the patrol car. Thomas countered that his limpness in the debris field did not matter for his conviction of resisting arrest because he was already arrested.

“Mr. Thomas was arrested when he was handcuffed, but the court of appeals looked to post-arrest evidence to uphold this conviction,” Deputy State Public Defender Jacob B. McMahon wrote to the Supreme Court.

The justices agreed with Thomas, and sent the case back to the Court of Appeals to reexamine whether there was sufficient evidence to convict Thomas of resisting arrest only up to the moment he was handcuffed.

Justice Carlos A. Samour Jr., writing for the court, explained that an arrest has occurred when an officer gains sufficient physical control over someone to be reasonably sure they will not leave. The court established previously that a person may commit the crime of resisting arrest up until that moment, after which they could be convicted of assault based on their conduct. 

“Under the circumstances of this case, we conclude that the deputies effected Thomas’s arrest when they handcuffed him,” Samour wrote in the Dec. 20 opinion. “That was the line of demarcation at which the crime of resisting arrest ended and the potential to commit the crimes of second degree assault and escape began.”

Thomas had also challenged his other convictions for bodily injury to an at-risk person and third-degree assault, as well as the trial court’s determination that he should receive a sentence enhancement for being a habitual criminal. The Supreme Court agreed that he could not stand convicted of both the bodily injury and assault offenses against Thomas’ landlady, based on how the legislature had drafted the law.

Thomas also prevailed on his claim that he should have received a lesser sentence under the habitual criminal statute, which increases the maximum prison term by four times for anyone who has been convicted of three previous felonies. Thomas argued that two of his prior drug felonies had since been reclassified and no longer counted toward the habitual felon calculation.

The Supreme Court deemed that interpretation the correct one and ordered a re-sentencing of Thomas. The court rejected the logic of the Court of Appeals on every issue raised in Thomas’s appeal.

The case is Thomas v. People.