A Cañon City man serving 32 years in prison for the attempted murder of his wife will receive a new trial after the state’s second-highest court concluded detectives failed to honor his constitutional right against self-incrimination when interrogating him.

Steven Todd Whitt appealed his convictions, arguing the trial court judge should have suppressed the video of his lengthy police interview, which jurors watched and the prosecution alluded to multiple times. He told the Court of Appeals that Fremont County Sheriff’s Detective Dale King and Florence Detective Jason Dorman were more concerned about obtaining incriminating statements than they were about respecting his right to remain silent, which he invoked 16 hours earlier in custody.

A three-judge appellate panel on Thursday agreed with Whitt, finding a violation of his constitutional rights.

“Although we acknowledge that substantial evidence supported Whitt’s convictions,” wrote Judge Jaclyn Casey Brown in the June 9 opinion, “we cannot say beyond a reasonable doubt that there is no reasonable possibility that admission of Whitt’s statements to the police might have contributed to Whitt’s conviction.”

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Miranda v. Arizona established the requirement for police to inform suspects prior to an in-custody interrogation of their rights to remain silent and to an appointed or hired attorney. Invocation of those rights means questioning must cease.

In a 1999 ruling of the Colorado Supreme Court that interpreted the requirements of Miranda, members of the court determined police can still “scrupulously honor” a suspect’s desire to remain silent while resuming questioning at a later time – under certain circumstances.

“If no significant factual event occurs to demonstrate that the suspect chose to resume answering questions after clearly asserting the right to remain silent,” cautioned Justice Michael L. Bender, “then the Miranda right to cut off questioning was not ‘scrupulously honored’.”

Whitt called 911 on June 29, 2015 to report his wife had driven off and “crashed into our gate,” with blood “everywhere.” Fremont County Sheriff’s Deputy Arin Hart interviewed Whitt’s wife at the hospital, where she asserted Whitt had hit her with rocks and attempted to choke her.

The deputy took Whitt into custody and advised him of his Miranda rights sometime after 8:45 p.m. Whitt responded that he did not wish to speak.

After remaining in jail overnight and through the morning, King and Dorman met with Whitt inside the interview room at the sheriff’s office.

“You were read your rights last night, right?” King asked. Whitt responded in the affirmative, and acknowledged he remembered his Miranda rights generally.

“OK, those are still in effect,” King continued. The detective confirmed that Whitt used to work in the jail, before prompting: “With your background, your knowledge, you know that, uh, there’s more than one side of every story.”

He added he was “just here to get the other side of the story.” When Whitt responded that he was trying to keep the “other side of the story” in the dark, King suggested that “now’s probably time to bring it out from under the covers. What do you think?”

For approximately 2.5 hours, Whitt talked largely uninterrupted with the detectives. He spoke at length about his wife’s alleged mental health issues, and the detectives honored his request to terminate the interview when Whitt eventually requested a lawyer.

Whitt asked District Court Judge Lynette M. Wenner to exclude his interview from the trial based on the failure of police to honor his constitutional right to silence. Wenner indicated she was denying the motion and would detail her reasons in a later order. There was no indication she ever issued an order before trial.

The prosecution relied heavily on Whitt’s statements in the interview room to accuse Whitt of changing his story and attack his self-defense claim.

“He talks about how crazy his wife is and how she doesn’t have a backbone and how she doesn’t have a spine. … Two hours of this, of demeaning his wife and her family,” the prosecutor told jurors during opening statements.

The jury convicted Whitt of attempted murder and assault. Court records show that around the same time, Whitt also pleaded guilty to witness tampering and sexual assault on a child in related proceedings.

While Whitt’s appeal raised several claims, the Court of Appeals focused entirely on the Miranda violation. Then-Chief Judge Steve Bernard sent the case back to Wenner with instructions to issue the detailed order, which she had yet to write, justifying her decision not to suppress the interrogation evidence.

In a 13-page review of Whitt’s case, Wenner found Whitt to be alert, articulate and calm during his interrogation. King and Dorman had ceased the interview once Whitt asked for a lawyer. He had participated voluntarily in the interrogation, with no threats from either of the detectives, and had “received law enforcement training” in his previous work.

“Defendant was educated and familiar with his Miranda rights,” Wenner concluded in February of this year. “Defendant’s subsequent waiver of his Miranda rights was knowing, voluntary, and intelligent.”

Whitt disputed many parts of Wenner’s findings, arguing there was no proof any jail or prison-related training Whitt underwent would have necessarily educated him about Miranda rights. Further, the focus should have been on the detectives’ failure to scrupulously honor Whitt’s invocation against self-incrimination, and not on Whitt’s actions in the interview room.

“Whitt did not volunteer his story without police questioning. In fact, Detective King had to coax Whitt a little bit to get him talking,” wrote attorney Lauretta A. Martin Neff on behalf of Whitt.

The Colorado Attorney General’s Office conceded that Wenner had improperly focused on Whitt’s willingness to speak after King had engaged him. The detectives’ behavior, acknowledged Senior Assistant Attorney General Melissa D. Allen, “appears to have been geared toward inviting an incriminating response.”

She otherwise defended Wenner’s decision, and added there was significant incriminating information Whitt provided on his own in recorded jailhouse conversations with family members.

The Court of Appeals panel evaluated a list of established factors to determine whether a “significant factual event” occurred for law enforcement to resume their interrogation attempts. The amount of time elapsed since Whitt invoked his rights and whether he received a fresh Miranda warning before his interrogation were among the factors that determine whether police scrupulously honored Whitt’s right to silence.

Problematically, the panel found Wenner had not evaluated the majority of the factors in her belated order. Instead, she had addressed such issues as the detectives’ willingness to terminate the interview when Whitt asserted his other constitutional right to an attorney.

That fact, wrote Brown, “is not relevant to whether police scrupulously honored Whitt’s previous invocation of his right to silence.” She further explained that the voluntariness of Whitt’s statements after prompting did not answer whether police had respected his right to silence in the first place.

The panel reversed Whitt’s convictions.

The case is People v. Whitt.