Colorado Court of Appeals — Reversed Conviction, Ordered New Trial
A Boulder County murder conviction has been wiped out after Colorado’s second-highest court found that a juror who openly admitted she could not be fair was still allowed to help decide the case. The Colorado Court of Appeals reversed Andrew James Ritchie’s conviction in the killing of Longmont postal carrier Jason Schaefer, ordering a new trial after concluding that the juror’s own words showed bias against him.
The three-judge panel’s decision, issued Thursday in People v. Ritchie, centers on a juror identified only as Juror P, according to Colorado Politics. During Ritchie’s 2023 trial, Juror P disclosed that she had serious post-traumatic stress disorder tied to an old trauma: more than 20 years earlier, she said, somebody threatened to kill her and her family. She told the court the violence at the center of Ritchie’s case was retraumatizing, saying it was leaving her distracted from the proceedings. When defense counsel asked directly whether she believed she could not be a fair juror, she answered, simply, “yes.”
A Judge’s Call to Keep Her On the Panel
Despite that exchange, Boulder County District Judge Patrick Butler declined to remove Juror P from the case. Butler said she had indicated she could remain fair despite her emotional experience, pointing to her statement that she would decide the case based on the evidence rather than whether she liked an attorney. The defense had moved to dismiss her over both her trauma and her own doubts about her fairness, but Butler denied that motion. A defense attorney later told Butler the following day that Juror P had reiterated she could not be fair…