Colorado’s second-highest court reversed a woman’s felony convictions for child abuse resulting in death last month after concluding the instructions that a San Miguel County judge provided the jury did not include the necessary language.

Hannah Marshall, 8, and Makayla Roberts, 10, were discovered dead and decomposing in a vehicle located on Frederick “Alec” Blair’s Norwood farm in 2017. A forensic examiner was unable to conclusively state the cause of death because of the condition of the girls’ bodies, but evidence suggested long-term malnourishment near the end of their lives.

Among those charged was Madani Ceus. Jurors heard she was in charge of the group of itinerant adults and children living on the farm. At some point, the victims were banished to live in a car with no food. Ceus directed that no one contact them.

Jurors convicted the children’s mother of murder and Ceus’ husband of child abuse resulting in death. Blair also received a 12-year prison sentence for his involvement.

Following her own convictions, Ceus contended the trial judge incorrectly instructed the jury about the charges. Under Colorado law, child abuse is a misdemeanor that can be committed in three ways:

• By causing an injury to a child’s life or health

• By permitting a child to be unreasonably placed in a life- or health-threatening situation

• By engaging in a continued pattern of malnourishment, lack of proper medical care, cruel punishment, mistreatment, or an accumulation of injuries leading to death or serious injury

The crime becomes a felony if a person acts knowingly or recklessly and the child abuse results in death. Colorado’s template jury instructions contain a special form asking jurors, if they find a person committed child abuse, “Did the child abuse result in death?”

District Court Judge Keri A. Yoder gave jurors an instruction form indicating they could find Ceus guilty of first-degree murder or the lesser charge of child abuse resulting in death. However, it did not specifically ask jurors to answer whether the child abuse resulted in death.

The jury acquitted Ceus of murder and found her guilty on two counts of child abuse resulting in death, for which she received 64 years in prison.

On appeal, Ceus argued the requirement that child abuse result in the victims’ deaths was only laid out in the third theory, relating to a pattern of malnourishment or mistreatment. Neither of the other two theories in the jury instruction contained the resulted-in-death requirement.

The prosecution stressed the discussion at trial made clear that child abuse resulting in death was the crime at hand, and the instruction referred in multiple places to the victims’ deaths.

“It says in its plain language ‘child abuse resulting in death.’ And then the option is guilty or not guilty,” Senior Assistant Attorney General Erin K. Grundy argued to a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals.

But the panel sided with Ceus. Judge Stephanie Dunn, in the June 27 opinion, noted jurors could have logically believed the children’s mother caused their deaths, rather than Ceus — especially since they acquitted Ceus of murder. That the instruction was labeled “child abuse resulting in death” was not the same as asking the jury to specifically answer the question.

“We therefore agree with Ceus that the jury ‘actually convicted’ her of misdemeanor — not felony — child abuse,” Dunn wrote.

The panel gave prosecutors the option of retrying Ceus for a felony or allowing her to be resentenced for a misdemeanor.

The case is People v. Ceus.