Colorado’s second-highest court reversed a Boulder County defendant’s sexual assault conviction last week after concluding that a trial judge should have intervened to stop the prosecutor from inappropriately using the man’s constitutional right to silence to suggest he was guilty.
Prosecutors charged Charles G. Higdon III with two counts of sexual assault. Jurors acquitted him of one and convicted him of the other. He is serving a six-year prison sentence.
The alleged victim was extremely intoxicated and Higdon had also been drinking prior to the sexual encounter. The dispute at trial was the consensual nature of the interaction…