Editor’s Note: Law Week Colorado edits court opinion summaries for style and, when necessary, length.
On Oct. 15, 2019, Lakewood police officers responded to a shooting outside an apartment complex around midnight. They found the victim in the parking lot. The victim later died.
A neighbor testified that before police arrived, she heard arguing, a car horn and then a gunshot, and saw three individuals rush to a waiting car before driving away.
At trial, Autumn Lucero, who had been present when the shooting occurred and accepted a plea deal from the prosecution before she testified, detailed her version of events leading up to the killing.
Alec d’Estree was alleged to have been involved. Once aware of his potential involvement, police arrested and later charged him on Nov. 14, 2019. Police also seized his iPhone and searched and downloaded all of its contents after acquiring a search warrant on Nov. 20, 2019.
The district court concluded the first search warrant for the cellphone’s content was invalid because it was overbroad. The prosecution later sought a second warrant to repeat the search.
Pursuant to the second warrant, the court allowed police to search the contents of d’Estree’s cellphone from Oct. 1, 2019, to Nov. 12, 2019, and the prosecution presented evidence collected from the phone at his homicide trial.
d’Estree was convicted on all charges: first-degree felony murder, second-degree murder, conspiracy to commit aggravated robbery, three charges of criminal attempt to commit aggravated robbery and two crime of violence sentence enhancers. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for his felony murder conviction and 16 years for the conspiracy to commit aggravated robbery conviction, served concurrently.
d’Estree appealed.
The Colorado Court of Appeals concluded that, in gathering evidence from d’Estree’s cellphone, police violated the Fourth Amendment and that no exceptions to the warrant requirement applied, and that the error allowing the evidence was not harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.
The appeals court found that the second warrant met the criteria for the independent source doctrine exception. Had police relied on the second warrant alone to retrieve the contents of d’Estree’s cellphone, the appeals court concluded that would have been permissible and the extracted evidence would have been properly admitted at trial. But police used illegally obtained information from the first warrant—the PIN code—in executing the second warrant, according to the opinion.
Because d’Estree has a cognizable right to the privacy of his cellphone PIN code that warrants constitutional protection, the appeals court concluded the brute force attack to discover his PIN code constituted a search under the Fourth Amendment. The appeals court found that the brute force attack was authorized under the second warrant, but not legal under the first, invalid warrant.
The appeals court could not find that the improper admission of the evidence against d’Estree was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. But it also could not say with certainty that there was insufficient evidence to convict d’Estree of some or all of the charged crimes, and it ruled that the prosecution is entitled to a retrial of all of d’Estree’s charges on remand.
The appeals court reversed d’Estree’s convictions and remanded.
In these consolidated appeals, Katarzyna Pawelec appealed the trial court’s permanent orders entered in connection with the dissolution of her marriage to Christopher Pawelec.
Katarzyna Pawelec’s appeal involves the application of an unusual statutory procedure, according to the opinion. Section 14-10-128.5(2) of the Colorado Revised statutes allows a party who has previously consented to arbitration of disputed parenting matters to “move the court to modify the arbitrator’s award pursuant to a de novo hearing.”
If, after the hearing, the court substantially upholds the arbitrator’s decision, the party who requested the de novo hearing “shall be ordered to pay the fees and costs of the other party … incurred in responding to” the motion, unless the court finds that the award of fees would be manifestly unjust.
Katarzyna Pawelec’s arguments required the Colorado Court of Appeals to examine, for the first time, whether a court “substantially upholds” the arbitrator’s decision if it reaches a substantially similar outcome but its reasoning differs from the arbitrator’s, and the appropriate scope of the fees and costs awarded under the statute.
The appeals court agreed that a court “substantially upholds” an arbitrator’s decision if it reaches a substantially similar outcome but its reasoning differs from the arbitrator’s. It also concluded that “fees and costs… incurred in responding” to the motion for a de novo hearing included the fees and costs incurred in preparing for and attending the de novo hearing, but they do not include fees and costs incurred before the motion for a de novo hearing is filed.
The appeals court affirmed in part, reversed in part and remanded.
Michelle Norton and Brandon Thompson appealed the district court’s order granting summary judgment in favor of Jeffrey Ruebel and Ruebel & Quillen, LLC, a company engaged in the practice of law.
In addition to challenging the grant of summary judgment, Norton argued that the court erred by denying their requests for production of Ruebel’s files regarding One Stop Construction and Landscapes, Inc.
Ruebel contended that he had the right to withhold production of the subject files to the Norton parties because he had placed a retaining lien on them.
The Colorado Court of Appeals held that the district court didn’t apply the correct legal standard when analyzing whether Ruebel’s retaining lien precluded production of the subject files to Norton. Because documents contained in the subject files may be relevant to the issue of causation, the appeals court reversed the grant of summary judgment to Ruebel and remanded for further consideration of Norton’s requests for the subject files.
The appeals court reversed the summary judgment and remanded.