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

The Court of Appeals has repeatedly reversed the convictions of defendants for more than a year – exclusively from Adams County – after the Colorado Supreme Court decided in 2022 that some judges’ well-meaning attempts to explain reasonable doubt in plain English actually reduced the threshold for a guilty verdict.

The Supreme Court’s ruling 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 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 jurors should go ahead with the “purchase” – and presume the defendant guilty – unless a significant “crack” appeared in the prosecution’s case to cause an acquittal. In reality, the opposite is true: Defendants are innocent until proven guilty.

Case: People v. Wideman

Decided: October 5, 2023

Jurisdiction: Adams County

Ruling: 3-0

Judges: Anthony J. Navarro (author)

Matthew D. Grove

Alex J. Martinez

Background: State Supreme Court draws line on unacceptable use of analogies by trial judges

The latest case before the Court of Appeals concerned the 2019 trial of Gary Lynn Wideman, who is serving a life sentence for murdering Brenda Lee Martinez and shooting three others at a bar in Thornton.

During jury selection, then-District Court Judge Tomee Crespin attempted to explain the concept of reasonable doubt by asking the jury to imagine an exhaustive quest to find a dream home, then suddenly seeing it on the market.

“The sun is literally only shining on this one piece of property. Everywhere else it’s snowy and cloudy, except for this one piece of pristine property,” she described. “You walk up to the closet and you notice a crack above the closet door. Are we still buying that house?”

Crespin continued to add other defects to the example – crumbling drywall, a defective door – and asked whether jurors would proceed with the purchase. Reasonable doubt, she explained in drawing a parallel to her illustration, is a hesitation to act in matters of importance, and “we use it every day. We just don’t call it that.”

A three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals agreed Crespin’s analogy suffered from the same problems as the one in Tibbels. She inadvertently suggested to jurors that even if a defect surfaced in the “home,” meaning the prosecution’s case, they should abandon the “purchase” and vote to acquit only if more doubts surfaced.

“That is, by focusing on how ideal the home appeared to be, and how long the search had gone on,” wrote Judge Anthony J. Navarro, “the court implied that a reasonable person would decline to buy the home (i.e., to acquit a defendant) only if the evidence established a doubt so great that it overcame the strong presumption in favor of buying the home.”

The panel ordered a new trial.

To date, there have been 10 analogy-related cases out of Adams County in which the Court of Appeals has overturned convictions in the wake of the Tibbels decision. Crespin was responsible for the majority of the faulty illustrations. Voters in Adams and Broomfield counties chose not to retain her in 2020.

A spokesperson for District Attorney Brian Mason said his office does not comment on Court of Appeals decisions. Although Mason’s office did not have data for every reversal, one case has been retried with a guilty verdict, one defendant pleaded guilty and two retrials are scheduled in the coming months. Tibbels, the original case the Supreme Court decided, is also set for a retrial in January.

The case is People v. Wideman.