A man serving a potential life sentence for sexually assaulting a woman will receive a new trial after Colorado’s second-highest court agreed an attorney who served on the jury injected damaging, outside legal information into deliberations.

In 2016, a jury convicted Damon D. Newman of raping a woman at gunpoint at Sloan’s Lake. Investigators linked Newman to the 2011 assault through his DNA years later. Newman contended he and the victim had consensual sex. Further, there was no forensic evidence of an attack and the victim had a motive to falsely accuse him.

After trial, one juror came forward to allege another person on the jury told everyone he “knew taking the bar (exam) would come in handy,” then proceeded to read a legal-sounding principle and explain why it suggested Newman was guilty. A trial judge held a hearing and determined it was not the kind of outside information jurors were forbidden from considering.

On Thursday, a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals disagreed.

The juror “independently researched the extraneous legal definition relating to character evidence,” wrote Judge Jaclyn Casey Brown in the Aug. 8 opinion. “In a largely he-said-she-said case, this is the very type of extraneous information that would pose a reasonable possibility that the verdict was influenced to a defendant’s detriment.”

The panel ordered a new trial for Newman, who is serving an indefinite sentence up to life in prison.

Following the verdict, a juror named S.P. wrote a statement explaining she believed it “was a very hard case with little concrete evidence.” S.P. was inclined to acquit Newman, but one juror, “an attorney for the Colorado Rockies,” was intent on convicting him. 

According to S.P., the attorney, identified as M.O., came back after a weekend break to say he had watched “12 Angry Men” and thought about the case.

“And then he said, I knew taking the bar would come in handy, and he pulled out a piece of paper out of his pocket and he said something to the effect of character witnesses,” S.P. alleged. M.O. “read that legal definition and then he said based on this you can infer from the lack of questions to Mr. Newman and his character witness and the lack of character witnesses that he’s a bad guy.”

S.P. added that M.O. told jurors Newman must have committed other felonies — likely a sex offense for police to obtain his DNA — and that the alleged victim must be telling the truth. 

Without a hearing, Newman’s original trial judge denied the motion for a new trial. However, a different three-judge appellate panel ordered further inquiry in 2020. Noting that courts typically do not delve into a jury’s deliberations and that jurors are permitted to rely on their professional and personal experiences, the panel also explained juries cannot be influenced by “legal content” from outside the proceedings that is relevant to the issues in a case.

“In sum, like any other juror, a lawyer-juror must refrain from engaging in an independent investigation into a legal or factual matter relevant to the case,” wrote Judge Ted C. Tow III. “But a lawyer-juror must also refrain from introducing any statements of law (even if from memory) that conflict with or are supplemental to the instructions of law provided by the trial court.”

At a 2021 hearing, S.P. testified before District Court Judge Jennifer B. Torrington. Her statements were largely consistent with her prior allegations, and she said M.O.’s comments prompted other jurors to write down that Newman was previously “picked up” on felonies and sex crimes — which was not supported by the evidence. 

Torrington declined to order a new trial, saying M.O. was “entitled to use his education and experience in assessing evidence” and “was not required to leave his preexisting views about the law at the door of the jury room.” She added there was “not a reasonable possibility” that M.O.’s legal statements in the jury room influenced the verdict.

The second appellate panel once again sided with Newman. Brown wrote that M.O. reading the definition of character witnesses, then opining the lack of character questions suggested that Newman was “a bad guy,” injected prohibited legal content into the deliberations.

“Juror S.P.’s testimony suggests that, rather than drawing from his personal legal knowledge, Juror M.O. — who ‘knew taking the bar would come in handy’ — conducted outside research and shared the results of that research with other jurors,” Brown explained.

She added the trial judge’s instructions never told jurors they could assume Newman was “a bad guy” based on an absence of questions or character witnesses. Moreover, there was no rule permitting jurors to make that assumption.

The only remaining question, Brown wrote, was whether M.O.’s improper statements, explicitly offered as a lawyer with legal training, would have influenced the other jurors to convict.

“Under the circumstances of this case, we can reach no other conclusion,” she noted.

The case is People v. Newman.