Peo v. Crawford

24CA0803 Peo v Crawford 10-02-2025

COLORADO COURT OF APPEALS

Court of Appeals No. 24CA0803
Fremont County District Court No. 23CR203
Honorable Thomas B. Flesher, Judge

The People of the State of Colorado,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

Brook N. Crawford,

Defendant-Appellee.

ORDER REVERSED AND CASE
REMANDED WITH DIRECTIONS

Division V
Opinion by JUDGE JOHNSON
Fox and Grove, JJ., concur

NOT PUBLISHED PURSUANT TO C.A.R. 35(e)
Announced October 2, 2025

Jeffrey D. Lindsey, District Attorney, Wendy S. Owens, Deputy District
Attorney, Cañon City, Colorado, for Plaintiff-Appellant

Joseph Chase, Alternate Defense Counsel, Denver, Colorado, for Defendant-
Appellee
¶1 An authorized representative of the District Attorney’s Office

for the Eleventh Judicial District (the prosecution) appeals the

district court’s order dismissing the criminal charges brought

against defendant, Brook N. Crawford (Crawford). The district court

determined that certain public statements about Crawford made by

the then-elected Eleventh Judicial District Attorney, Linda Stanley

(Stanley), constituted outrageous government conduct. We reverse

the order of dismissal and remand the case to the district court for

reinstatement of the criminal complaint.

I. Background

¶2 Solely for purposes of resolving this appeal and acknowledging

that Crawford likely disputes some or all of the allegations, we base

the following factual summary on the allegations in the complaint

and the affidavit supporting Crawford’s arrest, as well as the district

court’s written findings following Crawford’s preliminary hearing.

¶3 Crawford and William Jacobs (Jacobs) began dating in March

2023. Crawford had a son (the child) before meeting Jacobs. While

they were dating, Jacobs would sometimes watch the child, who

was ten months old, when Crawford was at work.

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¶4 On the morning of May 21, 2023, while Jacobs was watching

the child, he noticed that the child was unresponsive. He contacted

Crawford, someone called 911, and the child was transported to a

local hospital. Because the child had a brain bleed, however, he

was later transported by helicopter to Children’s Hospital Colorado

in Colorado Springs. Medical staff documented that the child

suffered acute and chronic subdural brain bleeds consistent with a

shaking-type injury. The staff opined that there was no way the

child’s injuries could have been caused by falling off the bed, hitting

his head on a door frame, or bouncing himself on his rocker.

Instead, they believed that the child suffered a “violent shaking

event that happened moments before law enforcement arrived” at

the scene. The child eventually died from his injuries.

¶5 Crawford was charged with (1) child abuse resulting in serious

bodily injury; (2) child abuse; and (3) cruelty to animals involving

the alleged mistreatment of a puppy she owned with Jacobs.

Jacobs was charged as a codefendant in a separate case. Following

briefing by the parties, the magistrate dismissed the child abuse

resulting in serious bodily injury charge for lack of probable cause.

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¶6 On July 12, 2023, Stanley invited a television reporter to her

office for an interview, portions of which aired that same day with

additional coverage in August 2023. During the portions of the

interview that aired in August 2023, Stanley suggested, among

other things, that Crawford was not a caring mother because she

considered the child a burden to take care of.

¶7 Below are Stanley’s comments about Crawford and Jacobs:

• “I think [Crawford] saw a live-in babysitter now she can

just really pound out the hours. Right? [Crawford’s] got

a live-in babysitter now she doesn’t have to worry about

anything, right?”

• “I had just had so many buzzers going off when they said

[Jacobs] was watching the baby.”

• “There is [sic] no witnesses, there is no nothing . . . .

There is [sic] a whole lot of things indicative of prior . . .

[a] prior incident with that baby.”

• “Without the caring factor, without the love factor, then

it’s, the baby is a pain in the ass.”

• “I mean I am going to be very blunt here. [Jacobs] has

zero investment in this child, zero. He is watching that

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baby so he can get laid, that’s it. And to have a place to

sleep. I’m sorry to be that blunt but honest to God that’s

what going on.”

¶8 Crawford contends that Stanley’s comments constituted

outrageous government conduct. She filed a motion to dismiss the

case, arguing that the statements violated the Colorado Rules of

Professional Conduct and prejudiced her right to a fair trial.

¶9 The district court held two hearings on the motion. After

reviewing the evidence and arguments, as well as additional

briefing, the district court granted Crawford’s motion. It found

Stanley’s comments “violated [Crawford’s] due process right to

receive a fair trial before an impartial jury.” The district court

considered other measures instead of dismissal such as change of

venue, vigorous voir dire, and screening questionnaires. But it

ultimately determined that any measure less drastic than dismissal

would not “adequately maintain the fairness of the proceeding,” and

“a change of venue would necessarily impact [Crawford’s]

constitutional right to a trial in the community where she lives and

where the conduct is alleged to have occurred.”

¶ 10 The prosecution appeals the court’s dismissal order.

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II. Standard of Review and Applicable Law

¶ 11 We review a district court’s dismissal of a criminal case based

on a finding of outrageous government conduct for abuse of

discretion. People v. Burlingame, 2019 COA 17, ¶ 10. A district

court abuses its discretion when its ruling is manifestly arbitrary or

unreasonable or when the court misapplies the law. Id.

¶ 12 A claim for “outrageous government conduct has always been

recognized as a violation of due process.” Id. at ¶ 11. Thus, “[w]e

review de novo to determine whether the state violated a

defendant’s due process rights.” People v. Eason, 2022 COA 54,

¶ 40. “But we review whether the district court fashioned an

appropriate remedy for an abuse of discretion.” Id.

¶ 13 “Outrageous governmental conduct is conduct that violates

fundamental fairness and is shocking to the universal sense of

justice.” People v. Medina, 51 P.3d 1006, 1011 (Colo. App. 2001),

aff’d sub nom., Mata-Medina v. People, 71 P.3d 973 (Colo. 2003). A

district court reviews the totality of facts in a given case to

determine if its prosecution should be barred due to outrageous

government conduct. Id. We will defer to a district court’s findings

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of fact when the record supports them. See People v. Jackson, 2018

COA 79, ¶ 50, aff’d, 2020 CO 75.

¶ 14 The Sixth Amendment of the United States Constitution

guarantees that a criminal defendant has the right to a trial “by an

impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have

been committed.” U.S. Const. amend. VI. Colorado’s Constitution

likewise has a similar provision that defendants have a right to an

“impartial jury of the county or district in which the offense is

alleged to have been committed.” Colo. Const. art. II, § 16.

III. Analysis

¶ 15 We agree with the prosecution that the district court

improperly dismissed the criminal charges against Crawford.

¶ 16 Regardless of how inappropriate Stanley’s public comments

were, there are only two situations in which outrageous government

conduct justifies the sanction of dismissal, and Crawford’s situation

does not fall under either.

¶ 17 The first occurs when the government creates or manufactures

the crime for which the defendant is charged in a way that

compromises the integrity of the judicial system. The only case in

Colorado involving this situation is People v. Auld, 815 P.2d 956,

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957 (Colo. App. 1991). In Auld, government agents conducted an

undercover operation that targeted a private attorney. Id. As part

of the undercover operation, the government agents “perpetrated a

fraud upon a court of this state by filing false documents, making

false statements to a judge, and creating a counterfeit prosecution.”

Id. at 958. The district court in Auld was unaware of the fictitious

nature of the proceedings. Because of the agent’s actions, a

division of this court “determined that the conduct of the executive

branch, in compromising the judicial branch, thereby making it an

unknowing accomplice to undercover prosecution activities, was so

outrageous that [dismissal was] required.” Id. at 959.

¶ 18 The second situation involves instances when the government

intrudes upon the attorney-client relationship. “[T]o show

outrageous governmental conduct in this context, a defendant must

show (1) the government’s objective awareness of an ongoing,

personal attorney-client relationship between the third party and

the defendant; (2) deliberate intrusion into that relationship; and

(3) actual and substantial prejudice.” People v. Walker, 2022 COA

15, ¶ 17.

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¶ 19 In fact, “[i]nstances where trial courts have found outrageous

government conduct in Colorado are vanishingly rare, and the

threshold for such a finding appears to be exceedingly high.”

Burlingame, ¶ 12. Generally, when this defense has been raised,

courts have found that less severe remedies than dismissal can

ameliorate any alleged or actual prejudice to the defendant or due

process concerns. See id. at ¶¶ 3, 19 (reversing a district court’s

ruling that two prosecutors, an investigator from the prosecution’s

office, and a police officer engaged in outrageous government

conduct for interviewing the defendant but remanding the case to

the district court to consider whether the defendant’s statement

should be suppressed due to the psychological coercion); Medina,

51 P.3d at 1012 (concluding that, while the police officers had acted

inappropriately by failing to advise defendant of his rights and

engaging in coercive conduct, such actions did not give rise to

outrageous government conduct, but “the proper remedy was

suppression of [the] defendant’s statements to the police”).

¶ 20 Nonetheless, Crawford argues that outrageous government

conduct “is a deliberately wide net, designed to protect due process

rights in extreme situations” and that “[n]arrowing the scope of

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such claims would remove a broad and necessary protection when,

as here, government conduct does not fall into a previously litigated

category of claim.” In other words, Crawford seeks to expand the

doctrine to her situation.

¶ 21 We decline to do so, in part, because Crawford has not cited,

nor are we aware of, any authority in this state or in other

jurisdictions in which the defense has been expanded to

circumstances other than the two identified.

¶ 22 Indeed, our survey of case law outside of Colorado supports

that the defense is limited. See United States v. Pedraza, 27 F.3d

1515, 1521 (10th Cir. 1994) (“To succeed on an outrageous conduct

defense, the defendant must show either: (1) excessive government

involvement in the creation of the crime, or (2) significant

governmental coercion to induce the crime.”); State v. Corcoran,

2023-Ohio-1218, ¶ 49 (8th Dist.) (“There are two factors that must

be demonstrated to establish the outrageous government conduct

defense: (1) government creation of the crime and (2) substantial

coercion.”); People v. Joly, 970 N.W.2d 426, 434-36 (Mich. Ct. App.

2021) (concluding that the government’s conduct was outrageous

because the government intruded upon the attorney-client

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relationship); People v. Guillen, 174 Cal. Rptr. 3d 703, 764 (Ct. App.

2014) (“Those cases where California courts have concluded

dismissal is required for outrageous government conduct all involve

situations where the government violated a fundamental right of the

defendants, the attorney-client relationship, and prevented them

from receiving a fair trial.”); State v. Laurence, 848 A.2d 238, 250

(R.I. 2004) (same); People v. Ming, 738 N.E.2d 628, 634 (Ill. App. Ct.

2000) (“A defendant can raise the defense of outrageous conduct if

the government was overly involved in the creation of a

crime . . . .”); State v. Houston, 475 S.E.2d 307, 322 (W. Va. 1996)

(same).

¶ 23 We also decline to expand the defense because a court may

employ other remedies to protect a defendant’s right to a fair trial

even when a defendant alleges that the government has acted

inappropriately by making extrajudicial statements. Among other

things, the defendant could seek a change of venue on grounds that

(1) the pretrial publicity was “so massive, pervasive, and prejudicial

as to create a presumption of public bias,” People v. Hankins, 2014

COA 71, ¶12; or (2) the defendant suffered actual prejudice by

proving “a nexus between pretrial publicity and a panel of partial

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jurors,” id. at ¶ 18. Generally, pretrial publicity may be mitigated

and a constitutionally impartial jury can be impaneled when the

venire is questioned individually or through a combination of

screening questionnaires, questioning by counsel, or individual

questioning by the court. Id.

¶ 24 The district court acknowledged that there were types of

remedies available for pretrial publicity that “would normally be

based upon evidence presented at public hearings and information

contained in an arrest warrant affidavit that was made public or

accessible by the public.” In the court’s view, it would be

inappropriate to treat Stanley’s “conclusory statements”

characterizing Crawford as uncaring, insinuating the child’s death

was unavoidable, and referring to Crawford’s prior criminal

histories as “normal pretrial publicity.” But whether Stanley

engaged in conduct sufficient for Crawford to establish a cognizable

outrageous government conduct claim warranting the sanction of

dismissal is distinct from whether Stanley’s conduct warranted

discipline separate from the criminal matter.

¶ 25 Indeed, Stanley was separately prosecuted in an attorney

disciplinary matter based, in part, on the district court’s finding

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that her actions constituted outrageous government conduct.

People v. Stanley, 559 P.3d 697, 749-52 (Colo. O.P.D.J. 2024). We

acknowledge that the Colorado Supreme Court Office of the

Presiding Disciplinary Judge (OPDJ) found Stanley’s conduct

outrageous, and we do not question that conclusion here. But the

OPDJ’s finding does not dictate the remedies available to the

district court in this criminal case, and we have concluded that

dismissal was not an available option because Stanley’s

statements — while inappropriate — did not assist with

manufacturing the conduct underlying the charged offenses, nor

did her statements attempt to invade an attorney-client

relationship. See also In re Stanley, 2025 CO 51, ¶¶ 109-113

(affirming the disciplinary board’s recommended sanction of

disbarment of Stanley’s license to practice law).

¶ 26 Thus, we conclude the district court erred by dismissing the

charges against Crawford.

IV. Conclusion

¶ 27 The order is reversed, and the case is remanded to the district

court to reinstate the criminal complaint.

JUDGE FOX and JUDGE GROVE concur.

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