Colorado’s second-highest court last week overturned a Montezuma County man’s drug conviction after concluding a judge allowed the prosecution to present a misleading version of what happened during the defendant’s arrest.

At the 2022 trial of Ramon Alberto Dejesus III, jurors saw a series of largely muted videos depicting Dejesus’ arrest and booking into jail. At the time a sheriff’s deputy learned Dejesus had an active warrant, Dejesus was wearing sweatpants over shorts. A search of the sweatpants revealed nothing incriminating.

However, at the jail, the deputy searched Dejesus again and uncovered a bag of methamphetamine in the shorts. The deputy asked if Dejesus had “anything else” — to which there was no response from Dejesus. Another deputy in the jail performed a third search and discovered five more bags of meth.

“The defendant, after being given multiple opportunities to disclose their presence, entered the jail with five baggies of meth in his pocket,” the prosecutor told jurors at trial. “We had the body cams, and frankly, they are sufficient. They show you what happened.”

The jury convicted Dejesus of possession with intent to distribute. He received a 16-year sentence.

But jurors did not know about the entirety of what happened during Dejesus’ arrest.

The first morning of trial, the defense asked to play the audio of the body-worn camera videos, which may have cast doubt on the idea that Dejesus knowingly possessed meth. During the video of the second search, Dejesus immediately said, “Oh, no, no, no, no, no” when the deputy found the drugs. Dejesus further claimed he was being “set up” and the bag was “not even mine.”

Dejesus “is pretty fervently denying pretty much the entire time on the video that the contraband is his,” the defense attorney argued.

Christopher J. Munch, a retired district judge overseeing the trial, denied the request to play Dejesus’ reaction to the jury. Instead, jurors heard the arresting deputy testify that Dejesus “made no statements” about the drugs.

On appeal, Dejesus argued the audio would have supported the defense’s theory at trial that Dejesus did not know about the drugs. Other circumstances — including the sudden discovery of the bags after multiple searches and the third search not being fully captured on video — also contributed to reasonable doubt.

“The muted video was misleading because it appeared Mr. Dejesus was silent in the face of (the deputy’s) discovery of the drugs, and therefore, implied he must be guilty,” wrote public defender Robin Rheiner.

A three-judge panel for the Court of Appeals agreed.

“To be sure, the error here is not that the misimpression established that, in fact, the drugs were planted on Dejesus. That question was for the jury to decide,” wrote Judge Ted C. Tow III in the Nov. 27 opinion. Instead, “if the jury had been privy to Dejesus’s emphatic statements immediately denouncing any knowledge of the drugs found in his pocket, it may have doubted whether he was aware of the drugs.”

Because Dejesus had to commit the offense knowingly, the panel agreed the suppression of the audio could have affected the verdict. Tow added that Munch’s ruling allowed the prosecution to repeatedly argue Dejesus had nothing to say about the drugs, when the district attorney’s office knew otherwise.

The panel ordered a new trial.

Although the Court of Appeals did not name the prosecutor, court records show the case was tried by Deputy District Attorney Jeremy Reed. Voters elected Reed the new district attorney for Montezuma and Dolores counties last month.

The case is People v. Dejesus.