Colorado’s second-highest court clarified on Thursday that a defendant did not need to demonstrate the nature of his relationship with his biological children in order to argue that a no-contact order infringed on his constitutional rights.

Last year, the Colorado Supreme Court issued a decision in Salah v. People, addressing what should happen when a convicted sex offender wants to continue interacting with his minor relatives. The court noted that familial relationships fall on a “spectrum of protection,” with parent-child relationships requiring the greatest degree of safeguarding and those with no parental or custodial aspect entitled to less protection.

The justices, in evaluating the defendant’s right to contact his nephew, noted he did not “present any evidence demonstrating the nature of his relationship.” Therefore, his constitutional right to familial association was not violated with the no-contact order with his nephew.

At the time the Supreme Court decided Salah, the appeal of Donald Joseph Manzanares Jr. was pending. Manzanares is serving a prison sentence for various offenses, including domestic violence. There is a mandatory protection order, also known as a restraining order, barring Manzanares from contacting his adult victim and his two biological children.

Manzanares sought to modify the protection order on multiple occasions, in one instance proposing that he be allowed to send his children letters through an intermediary.

Then-Jefferson County District Court Judge Robert Lochary declined to modify the order, citing Manzanares’ criminal history, the mother’s objection to any modification and Lochary’s “serious concerns regarding the victims’ mental, emotional and physical safety were defendant allowed to contact them.”

“For over nine years, Mr. Manzanares has been forbidden from contacting his biological sons. He has not been accused of physically abusing his children, and none of his convictions lists either son as a victim,” argued public defender Leah Scaduto on appeal.

In response, the government invoked the recently decided Salah case, arguing Manzanares’ familial rights were not implicated because he failed to demonstrate he had a relationship with his biological children. 

“Here, despite being the children’s father, defendant had no discernible parental-like relationship with his boys, defendant was incarcerated for most of his boys’ lives, defendant didn’t provide for the emotional, physical and mental well-being of his boys or act in their best interests, and defendant violently attacked the (adult victim) while they watched,” wrote Senior Assistant Attorney General Katharine Gillespie. Therefore, “there is simply no basis to find that the constitution protects defendant’s relationship with his children to the same degree as it does a father whose relationship with his child society recognizes as worthy of respect and protection.”

However, a three-judge Court of Appeals panel pointed out the Supreme Court had specifically acknowledged that parent-child relationships have the strongest degree of protection in its Salah decision. Notwithstanding his criminal conduct, wrote Judge Craig R. Welling in the July 3 opinion, Manzanares’ fitness as a parent was never legally in doubt.

“(W)e can’t say that Manzanares was required to affirmatively demonstrate a substantial relationship with his own children when his right to familial association was never questioned in the first place,” Welling wrote.

The panel found Lochary had not specifically addressed Manzanares’ claim of a constitutional violation through the no-contact order. Further, Lochary had not made findings about whether the order deprived him of his right to familial association and whether there was a narrower way to protect the children while allowing some contact.

“Because of the lack of complete findings and the trial court didn’t directly consider this issue,” Welling wrote, “we can’t determine on this record whether compelling circumstances then existed or currently exist that warrant the imposition of conditions prohibiting or limiting Manzanares’s right to familial association with the children.”

The panel returned the case to the trial court to re-examine the scope of the protection order.

The case is People v. Manzanares.