Colorado’s second-highest court reversed a man’s felony murder conviction for the second time on Thursday after an Arapahoe County prosecutor made the same mistake that triggered reversal of the defendant’s first conviction years earlier.

Although David Alberto Garcia was not the person who shot Eduardo Hernandez-Zuniga in an Aurora motel room, a jury convicted him of felony murder in March 2018. The offense requires that someone commit another underlying felony — burglary, in Garcia’s case — and a person dies as a result. Garcia received a sentence of life in prison.

In 2021, a three-judge Court of Appeals panel ordered a new trial. At issue in Garcia’s appeal was an 85-minute video of his interrogation after Hernandez-Zuniga’s murder. Detectives suspected Garcia was involved in a total of four shootings, including one at Denver’s Stone nightclub.

The detectives began by telling Garcia he was in custody for the Stone shooting.

“Yeah, well, one of my family members kept telling me, ya know, ‘Turn yourself in, turn yourself in,’” he told the detectives. “I don’t like to turn myself in, ya know that. I’m like, there’s reasons why I did it, but still, it doesn’t justify … ya know, the action that happened.”

Then-District Court Judge Ben L. Leutwyler agreed to redact more than a dozen statements from the video at the defense’s request. Although there were no other references to the Stone shooting, Leutwyler allowed Garcia’s “I did it” statement to be played for the jury.

The appellate panel concluded Garcia’s convictions could not stand because the unredacted statement about another shooting mistakenly gave jurors the impression that Garcia had confessed his involvement in the Aurora murder.

While the prosecution suggested the unredacted statements were brief and would not have affected the jury’s verdict, “even the most fleeting statements cannot be considered harmless — on that basis alone — where they are essentially admissions of guilt,” wrote Judge Ted C. Tow III.

The prosecution put Garcia on trial for a second time in 2023. Prosecutor Christopher Gallo, who also tried the case the first time, confirmed that he made the necessary redactions to the interrogation video.

But he had not. After jurors heard the same problematic statements, District Court Judge David Karpel dismissed the jury for the day.

The next morning, the defense asked for a mistrial, arguing that “the jury went home and sat overnight with that information. That was the last thing they heard before they left this courtroom.”

Instead, Karpel told the jury to “disregard that tape in its entirety. I’m hereby ordering you to disregard everything that you heard on that tape. You will not and shall not consider that tape for any purpose whatsoever.”

After jurors convicted Garcia again, he once more asked the Court of Appeals to reverse his convictions based on the same error.

“It’s hard to get more confessional than a video recording of the defendant telling police, ‘I did it,’ when he appears to be talking about the charged offense,” wrote public defender John Plimpton. “An instruction — let alone a belated one — cannot undo the prejudice caused by the jury’s exposure to such a statement.”

A different Court of Appeals panel agreed that the mistake warranted yet another trial.

“The jury heard Garcia say, “(T) here’s reasons why I did it,’ and ‘I did think about turning myself in,’ before the court called a recess and excused the jury,” wrote Judge Katharine E. Lum in the July 16 opinion. “And in some ways, how trial unfolded called greater attention to the inadmissible statements because the unredacted snippet of video was the last (or nearly the last) evidence the jury heard before recessing for the day, and the court didn’t give a curative instruction until the following morning.”

She added that a second set of statements, which the original Court of Appeals panel did not address, should have been redacted because it was unclear whether they related to the Aurora shooting.

District Attorney Amy Padden, who was elected after both of Garcia’s trials, did not immediately address whether her office would try Garcia a third time.

“While I respectfully disagree with the Court of Appeals’ decision, we respect the judicial process and are currently reviewing the opinion, the case file, and the applicable law to determine our next steps. While this review is ongoing, we are not in a position to comment further at this time,” she said in a statement.

The case is People v. Garcia.