Colorado Supreme Court Overturns Prison-Murder Conviction, Says Prosecutors Withheld Evidence in Death-Penalty Case

The Colorado Supreme Court has upheld a tri­al court rul­ing over­turn­ing the first-degree mur­der con­vic­tion of David Bueno (pic­tured) after Arapahoe County pros­e­cu­tors who sought the death penal­ty against him in a prison killing hid evi­dence that point­ed to anoth­er sus­pect. The January 22 rul­ing comes in the wake of a tri­al court rul­ing that pros­e­cu­tors in the state’s 18^th Judicial District, which includes Arapahoe County, also sup­pressed more than twen­ty pieces of evi­dence that should have been dis­closed to the defense in the cap­i­tal tri­als of death-row pris­on­ers Sir Mario Owens and Robert Ray.

Bueno’s lawyer, David Lane, called the pat­tern of pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al con­duct in the 18^th Judicial District, ​“Mississippi in the moun­tains.” ​“Ethically, pros­e­cu­tors are required to seek jus­tice, not con­vic­tions,” he said. ​“But they appar­ent­ly lose sight of that on a reg­u­lar basis, espe­cial­ly on death-penal­ty cas­es in the 18^th Judicial District.” 

Bueno and a sec­ond Latino pris­on­er, Alex Perez, were charged with stab­bing a white pris­on­er, Jeffrey Heird, to death in 2004. 

The day before the mur­der, anoth­er white pris­on­er, Michael Snyder, told his wife in a phone call record­ed by the prison that he had been ordered to stab a pris­on­er. The evening after the mur­der, a prison nurse found a note con­tain­ing threats by a white suprema­cist prison group to kill ​“men of the white race who refuse to accept their proud race.” The nurse imme­di­ate­ly pre­pared an inci­dent report that includ­ed a copy of the let­ter. One day lat­er, anoth­er white inmate died under sus­pi­cious cir­cum­stances and a prison lieu­tenant who was inves­ti­gat­ing the death pre­pared a sec­ond report sug­gest­ing the deaths might be connected. 

The court wrote that undis­put­ed evi­dence estab­lished that ​“the pros­e­cu­tion pos­sessed both of these reports with­in days of Heird’s mur­der but did not pro­vide copies of them to Bueno until five years lat­er,” after he had been con­vict­ed. Despite spe­cif­ic requests by the defense to be pro­vid­ed all inci­dent reports, and in vio­la­tion of its con­sti­tu­tion­al oblig­a­tion to dis­close all poten­tial­ly excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence, the court found pros­e­cu­tors had made ​“a con­scious deci­sion … to keep the infor­ma­tion from the Defendant.” The court agreed with the tri­al judge that these vio­la­tions were prej­u­di­cial because “[t]he iden­ti­ty of Heird’s killer was the core issue at tri­al, with Bueno argu­ing that white suprema­cists had com­mit­ted the mur­der,” and the jury had tak­en four days to delib­er­ate, includ­ing ask­ing the court how to over­come a dead­lock. The jury then imposed a life sen­tence, reject­ing the death penal­ty in the case. 

In a 2010 inter­view with Westword after the tri­al court had over­turned Bueno’s con­vic­tion, Lane called it ​“tru­ly stun­ning that the pros­e­cu­tors in this case hid evi­dence that was so favor­able to the defense” and said ​“it is par­tic­u­lar­ly shock­ing in light of the fact that this was a death penalty case.” 

A 2015 study showed sig­nif­i­cant racial and geo­graph­ic dis­par­i­ties in the pros­e­cu­tion of death-penal­ty cas­es in Colorado, with non-white defen­dants and defen­dants in the 18^th Judicial District sta­tis­ti­cal­ly more like­ly to be cap­i­tal­ly pros­e­cut­ed. All three pris­on­ers on Colorado’s death row are from the 18^th Judicial District. 18^th District DA George Brauchler, who opposed the grant of a new tri­al in the case, is cur­rent­ly seek­ing elec­tion as Colorado’s Attorney General.

In a sim­i­lar case from Texas, pris­on­er Robert Pruett was exe­cut­ed on October 12, 2017 for the mur­der of prison guard, Daniel Nagle. No phys­i­cal evi­dence tied Pruett to the mur­der and, accord­ing to Pruett’s clemen­cy peti­tion, Officer Nagle had been work­ing as a whistle­blow­er to iden­ti­fy cor­rupt cor­rec­tion­al offi­cers who had been help­ing prison gangs laun­der drug mon­ey. Nagle’s name was dis­cov­ered on a note from an inmate say­ing that a prison gang want­ed him dead. DNA on the mur­der weapon did not match either Pruett or Nagle, and Pruett had argued that DNA belonged to the actual killer.