DENVER (Legal Newsline) - A trial judge was justified in reducing a homicide suspect’s charges from first-degree murder to second-degree as punishment for the district attorney’s repeated violations of discovery orders, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled.
Three justices, including the Chief Justice, dissented, saying the sanction was too harsh and gave the suspect a “freebie” that reduced the deterrent effect of criminal law.
Attorneys for the state argued Cañon City Judge District Judge Kaitlin Turner abused her discretion by throwing out the first-degree murder charge against Joseph Tippet, who was accused of shooting his sleeping father in the back of the head. The judge acted after the office of Fremont District Attorney Linda Stanley delayed by more than a month the handing over of evidence Tippet needed to prepare his case.
Citing an “ongoing, significant pattern of discovery violations” involving at least 20 prior cases, the judge ordered the sanction as a deterrent to DA Stanley and her prosecutors. The Colorado Supreme Court took up the case at the state’s urging, to decide for the first time whether a judge could dismiss a criminal charge as a sanction. The answer, a majority of justices ruled, is yes.
Stanley, meanwhile, had her license suspended last year and faces more punishment.
Tippett was arrested on Jan. 6, 2023 and after his first appearance in court, a magistrate judge ordered the DA’s office to turn over all relevant evidence by Jan. 28. By March 6, the office had only turned over 148 pages of discovery and some body camera footage, so Tippet’s lawyer moved to dismiss the first-degree murder charge as a sanction.
The magistrate gave the prosecutor until March 29 to turn over all the discovery, and the office turned over an additional 1,134 pages the day before that deadline.
The prosecutor argued any delays were due to staff turnover and miscommunications between departments. But the court granted sanctions, finding a “pattern and practice of neglect” in the DA’s office in at least 20 other cases.
Before the Supreme Court, the state argued “pattern of discovery violations” hadn’t been defined by appellate courts, and had “no objective meaning associated with it.” The state asked to limit the definition to violations by the same prosecutor, the same type of discovery violation and an office policy of doing it.
“We decline to adopt this definition,” the Supreme Court said. “Pattern” has a generally understood meaning and elected officials should be held accountable for it. “The People’s proposed definition disregards the responsibility an elected district attorney has to oversee and supervise the office’s discovery process,” the court said. “Having found a long-standing history of pattern discovery violations, the court’s goal was not simply to cure the prejudice resulting from the violations in this case, but instead was to encourage the District Attorney’s Office to finally commit the managerial, supervisory, and training resources necessary to resolve its intractable, systemic pattern of discovery violations.”
Justice Carolos Samour dissented, joined by Chief Justice Brian Boatright and Justice Monica Marquez, saying that after the DA’s office was threatened with sanctions, it complied with the discovery order.
Justice Samour said he understood the judges “were at their wits’ end with this District Attorney’s Office and wanted to send a message.”
If prosecutors believe Tippet committed first-degree murder, however, “he ought to stand charged of murder in the first degree,” the dissenting justice wrote. “He shouldn’t get a freebie by having the charge lowered to murder in the second degree.”