Colorado’s second-highest court ruled on Thursday that the crime of attempting to influence a public servant does not require the defendant to personally be the one making the deceptive statement.

In answering the question for the first time, a three-judge panel for the Court of Appeals upheld a man’s conviction despite his effort to blame the crime on his mother.

Michael Thomas Hupke was on parole when law enforcement arrested him for unrelated charges. In jail, Hupke talked to his mother over the phone, asking her to contact his parole officer about getting him released. However, Hupke’s parole terms required him to get permission from his parole officer before changing addresses, and Hupke had recently moved apartments in Aurora without doing so.

Hupke, on the recorded jail call, asked his mother to tell the parole officer he was in the process of moving or was planning to move.

A jury subsequently convicted Hupke of attempting to influence a public servant, a felony that requires the intent to alter a public official’s actions “by means of deceit.“

On appeal, Hupke challenged his conviction on the grounds that he was not the one who deceived anybody. Rather, his mom did.

“Evidence that he convinced his mother to lie,” wrote attorney Robin M. Lerg, “would be his mother’s deceit, not his.”

The Court of Appeals panel disagreed, believing the law criminalized the act of using “some sort of plan or method” to deceive.

The deceit requirement “describes the offender’s attempt to influence a public servant through any fraudulent and deceptive misrepresentation designed to deceive and trick the public servant,” wrote Judge Rebecca R. Freyre in the July 11 opinion.

The case is People v. Hupke.