The state’s second-highest court has reversed a man’s convictions for sexually assaulting a child after determining it was improper for prosecutors to rely on Juan Hernandez-Ramirez’s Internet searches for pornography after allegedly abusing the victim.

A three-judge panel for the Court of Appeals relied on a Colorado Supreme Court decision from earlier this year jettisoning a longstanding but vague legal doctrine that allowed for, in the high court’s words, “all sorts of misdeeds and character evidence – no matter how attenuated in time, place, or manner.”

Because of the “he said, she said” nature of the case, the panel concluded that Hernandez-Ramirez’s unrelated Internet searches could have led the jury to infer that the allegations against him were true because of his bad character.

Jurors found Hernandez-Ramirez guilty on two counts of sexual assault on a child for allegedly molesting a girl in July 2017. Approximately one month beforehand, Hernandez-Ramirez was allegedly sitting with the victim in a car as he watched lewd videos. He reportedly told the victim to “go into an application” on the phone and search for “porno que hacen los niños” or child porn.

Denver prosecutors subsequently introduced evidence at trial of over 100 Internet searches Hernandez-Ramirez conducted in October 2017 for pornography. They argued the searches were “part and parcel” to the criminal charges because they showed Hernandez-Ramirez’s “plan and preparation” to commit child sex offenses.

The defense maintained the searches were irrelevant because they happened after the alleged abuse.

Under Colorado’s rules of evidence, information about other crimes or acts is not allowable at trial if it is meant to illustrate a person’s bad character. If the evidence is intended to show a person’s motive or preparation for the crime, however, it may be admissible.

In February, while Hernandez-Ramirez’s case was on appeal, the state Supreme Court decided in Rojas v. People to discard the “res gestae” doctrine, which allowed trial courts to admit evidence of other acts at trial. Calling the doctrine vague and “harmful,” Justice William W. Hood III wrote in the court’s majority opinion that judges should now apply the rules of evidence by looking at whether certain information is intrinsic or extrinsic to the charges.

With that direction, the appellate panel concluded that not only were Hernandez-Ramirez’s October 2017 pornography searches extrinsic to the sex assault charges, but they were so unlike the alleged searches he made the victim perform in the car that their purpose was to lead the jury to consider his bad character.

“And the admitted searches went far beyond the types of searches that Hernandez-Ramirez allegedly told the victim to conduct,” wrote Judge David J. Richman in the May 19 opinion, in that they were so graphic as to “shock the conscience of the average juror.”

Ultimately what led the appellate panel to reverse Hernandez-Ramirez’s convictions was the prosecution’s heavy reliance on the October searches at trial, telling jurors at closing arguments to “look very carefully” at the obscene search terms.

“This direction necessarily rested on an inference that Hernandez-Ramirez acted in conformity with his bad character: because he searched for pornography in October, he must have been viewing pornography in the car, thereby grooming the victim for further sexual interaction,” Richman wrote.

The case is People v. Hernandez-Ramirez.