{"id":65869,"date":"2019-06-25T18:48:50","date_gmt":"2019-06-26T00:48:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/judge-refuses-to-toss-ignacio-murder-case\/"},"modified":"2019-06-26T00:48:50","modified_gmt":"2019-06-26T00:48:50","slug":"judge-refuses-to-toss-ignacio-murder-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/judge-refuses-to-toss-ignacio-murder-case\/","title":{"rendered":"Judge refuses to toss Ignacio murder case"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Mitchell\"
Mitchell<\/span>du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

A Colorado senior judge overseeing a La Plata County homicide retrial denied a motion this week to dismiss the case based on what defense lawyers called \u201coutrageous governmental conduct,\u201d court records show.<\/p>\n

Tommy Mitchell, a Farmington man convicted in 2014 of first-degree murder<\/a>, is scheduled for retrial<\/a> in mid-August on allegations related to the 2012 death of Joey Benavidez. The Colorado Appeals Court in September overturned Mitchell\u2019s 2014 conviction and life-in-prison sentence<\/a> for killing Benavidez, citing judicial bias from 6th Judicial District Court Chief Judge Jeffery Wilson.<\/p>\n

Mitchell\u2019s attorneys, John Baxter and Carmen Brooks, argued that the court should dismiss the case based on \u201cnumerous instances of governmental misconduct\u201d in the 2014 trial. While Senior Judge John McMullen agreed with defense council that conduct by former 6th Judicial District Attorney Todd Risberg and law enforcement may have been improper, it did not rise to the legal standard of \u201coutrageous conduct,\u201d McMullen wrote in a June 24 order.<\/p>\n

\u201c(The conduct) did not compromise the integrity of the court so as (to) defeat available remedies, and while on the whole could be fairly described as reprehensible, it did not rise to the level of violating fundamental fairness and being \u2018shocking to the universal sense of justice,\u2019\u201d McMullen wrote in reference to defense attorney allegations.<\/p>\n

\u2018Shocking to the universal sense of justice\u2019<\/div>\n

Defense attorneys claim in a 46-page motion in January seeking to dismiss the case that the former district attorney and law enforcement committed perjury; the prosecution misrepresented Colorado Bureau of Investigation policies on evidence testing; the district attorney failed to disclose agreements with co-defendants; prosecutors improperly charged a defense attorney representing a co-defendant with a crime; prosecutors misrepresented a drive-by shooting as the motive for the killing; and prosecutors accused a co-defendant of first-degree murder charges when there wasn\u2019t evidence to support the claim.<\/p>\n

Specifically, and respectively, the defense says:<\/p>\n

Prosecutors and law enforcement lied about the location of a butterfly knife at the crime scene.<\/em>Defense attorneys were prohibited from viewing bagged evidence based on false information about contaminating evidence.<\/em>Prosecutors arranged undisclosed plea deals with co-defendants who agreed to testify as witnesses against Mitchell. <\/em>Local defense attorney Brian Schowalter, who was representing a co-defendant, was charged with tampering with evidence and made unavailable to his client, which prejudiced Mitchell\u2019s case.<\/em>Prosecutors claimed a motive for the murder that was inaccurate. <\/em>A first-degree murder charge against a co-defendant changed to a misdemeanor plea after the co-defendant agreed to cooperate and testify against Mitchell.<\/em>\u201cThe conduct of the district attorney and law enforcement in Mr. Mitchell\u2019s case violates fundamental fairness and is shocking to the universal sense of justice,\u201d defense attorneys wrote. \u201cTherefore, all counts against Mr. Mitchell must be dismissed. \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Good faith mistakes\u2019<\/div>\n

In a response to the motion, prosecutors said the alleged conduct did not rise to the level prejudicing the trial. The Feb. 6 response claims Mitchell\u2019s attorneys had ample time and information to prepare a defense and took every measure to correct misrepresentations before a jury.<\/p>\n

District Attorney Christian Champagne said in the February motion that the trial wasn\u2019t prejudice, specifically because:<\/p>\n

Investigators were not malicious in misrepresenting the location of the butterfly knife; rather, they simply could not recall the exact location before reviewing video evidence.<\/em>Prosecutors were mistaken about the CBI evidence policy and later corrected the record.<\/em>Defense attorneys were able to reference plea deals made with co-defendants throughout trial proceedings.<\/em>Schowalter\u2019s indictment may have been \u201carguably incorrect,\u201d but it in no way affected defense council\u2019s preparation for the case.<\/em>Prosecutors\u2019 misrepresentation of a drive-by shooting as a motive occurred because of incorrect information provided by a witness and was done in good faith. <\/em>Downgrading allegations against a co-defendant from first-degree murder to a misdemeanor charge was the product of new information, not a plot against the defendant. <\/em>\u201cThe reality is that, while mistakes were made, those mistakes were good faith mistakes made by humans who make mistakes,\u201d Champagne wrote in his response to defense allegations of misconduct. \u201cThe reality is council for defendant, while raising legitimate mistakes made by the District Attorney\u2019s Office, cannot demonstrate prejudice or that the integrity of the court system was negatively affected as to each and every claim made in defendant\u2019s motion.\u201d<\/p>\n

bhauff@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Defense team for Tommy Mitchell alleged \u2018outrageous government conduct\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":65870,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[168,28,131,2822,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-65869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-crime","tag-headlines","tag-homicide","tag-justice-and-rights","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65869"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65869\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65869"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=65869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}