Colorado’s second-highest court on Thursday once again overturned a defendant’s conviction because an Adams County judge illustrated reasonable doubt to jurors in a way that improperly lessened the prosecution’s burden to prove him guilty.

The Court of Appeals has repeatedly reversed the convictions of defendants for more than a year, after the Colorado Supreme Court decided last January that some judges’ well-meaning attempts to explain reasonable doubt in plain English actually lowered the threshold for a guilty verdict. Previously, the appellate court warned judges away from trying to illustrate reasonable doubt with everyday concepts, but some – primarily in Adams County – continued to do so.

A spokesperson for Brian Mason, the elected district attorney for Adams and Broomfield counties, declined to offer comment about the unparalleled number of reversals that have ensued from Adams County, and Adams County alone.

The Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Tibbels v. People, which was the first time the justices reversed a conviction due to a reasonable doubt analogy, likewise arose from Adams County.

In Tibbels, a trial judge had compared reasonable doubt to the crack in the foundation of a “dream” home, suggesting a homebuyer would hesitate to purchase the house once they discovered the defect. The Supreme Court instead found the illustration made it seem as if the defendant was presumed guilty unless a significant “crack” appeared in the prosecution’s case to cause an acquittal, among other problems with the analogy.

In the most recent analogy-related case, jurors convicted Roman Martinez in 2019 of assault, child abuse and other offenses. During jury selection, then-District Court Judge Tomee Crespin read the legal definition of reasonable doubt, then analogized it to a “dream house” that jurors would hesitate to buy after seeing a series of defects.

“That, ladies and gentlemen, is reasonable doubt. Is it causing you to, whoa, I need some more information? Or are you going to go forward and keep going?” she explained.

A three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals found Crespin’s analogy almost indistinguishable from the improper crack-in-the-foundation illustration in Tibbels. She had suggested jurors could “keep going” with the dream home purchase – or find Martinez guilty – unless they detected an obvious defect. In reality, a criminal defendant remains innocent until the government proves him guilty.

“What’s more, the court arguably suggested that even if the evidence raised reasons to doubt whether the prosecution had proved its case, it might be appropriate for the jury to nonetheless push forward, continuing to presume guilt, unless and until a more extreme doubt surfaced,” wrote Judge Elizabeth L. Harris in the Feb. 16 opinion. “Such a suggestion not only violates the presumption of innocence and improperly shifts the burden of proof to the defendant, it also overstates the degree of doubt necessary to acquit.”

The case is People v. Martinez.