The Colorado Court of Appeals published 5 opinions on Thursday, April 30. The following are short summaries of each:
The People of the State of Colorado, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Floyd David Slusher, Defendant-Appellant. 2026COA30. JUDGMENT AFFIRMED. A division of the court of appeals holds that law enforcement’s use of Torrential Downpour, proprietary government software, to download files from the defendant’s computer over a peer-to-peer file-sharing network was not a search under the Fourth Amendment or the Colorado Constitution. The division also holds that the district court did not err by declining to order disclosure of the software to the defense team where the defendant presented no evidence that it would have been favorable to his defense.
The People of the State of Colorado, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Michael Evans, Defendant-Appellant. 2026COA31. ORDERS REVERSED AND CASE REMANDED WITH DIRECTIONS. In this postconviction case, the defendant argued that his lawyer’s ineffective assistance caused him to reject a “soft” plea offer during plea negotiations; as a result, no firm offer materialized and he proceeded to trial, after which he was convicted of felony murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole. After a hearing, the district court rejected the ineffective assistance of counsel claim, reasoning that the defendant could not establish prejudice in the absence of a firm offer.
A division of the court of appeals, following federal case law on this issue, concludes that the absence of a firm offer does not preclude a claim that counsel’s ineffective assistance prevented the defendant from entering a plea pursuant to a plea offer. To prevail on that version of an ineffective assistance of plea counsel claim, the defendant must make a threshold showing that, but for counsel’s deficient performance, there is a reasonable probability that the prosecution would have made a firm offer.
Because the district court applied the wrong legal standard, the division reverses the district court’s denial of the claim and remands for further proceedings. The division also reverses the district court’s summary denial of a second ineffective assistance of counsel claim and remands for an evidentiary hearing on that claim.
The People of the State of Colorado, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. James Edward Papol, Defendant-Appellant. 2026COA32. ORDER AFFIRMED. In this postconviction proceeding, a division of the court of appeals considers, for the first time, whether certain statutory processes for criminally prosecuting a juvenile in a district court under the direct file statute in section 19-2-517(1)(a)(I), C.R.S. 2020 — such as a transfer hearing — are jurisdictional or procedural. If the defendant is age eligible and the criminal offenses for which the defendant is charged are enumerated in the direct file statute — which is the case here — the division concludes that the statutory requirements are procedural, not jurisdictional. As a result, because the defendant in this case entered into a valid plea agreement, he waived any error committed by the district court.
Nicholas A. Rigato, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Executive Director of the Colorado Department of Corrections and Warden of Fremont Correctional Facility, Defendants-Appellees. 2026COA33. JUDGMENT REVERSED AND CASE REMANDED WITH DIRECTIONS. A division of the court of appeals considers for the first time whether C.R.C.P. 6(a)(1), which provides that, if the last day of a deadline found in the Colorado Rules of Civil Procedure “is a Saturday, a Sunday, or a legal holiday,” the deadline is calculated as “the end of the next day which is not a Saturday, a Sunday, or a legal holiday,” applies to actions subject to C.R.C.P. 106(b)’s twenty-eight-day deadline.
The division concludes that C.R.C.P. 6(a)(1)’s computation rule determines the actual deadline under C.R.C.P. 106(b) when the twenty-eighth calendar day falls on a Saturday, Sunday, or legal holiday. The division distinguishes Brown v. Walker Commercial, Inc., 2022 CO 57, 521 P.3d 1014, in which the Colorado Supreme Court held that C.R.C.P. 6(b) — which authorizes courts to grant motions for extension of time in civil cases under certain circumstances — cannot extend C.R.C.P. 106(b)’s filing deadline. The division explains that Brown does not apply to this case because C.R.C.P. 6(a)(1), unlike C.R.C.P. 6(b), governs the computation of deadlines and is not an extension of time rule.
For these reasons, the division reverses the district court’s order dismissing for lack of jurisdiction the plaintiff’s case challenging his prison disciplinary convictions.
Carroll Partners LLC, a Colorado limited liability company, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. The Board of Commissioners of Pitkin County, Colorado, Defendant-Appellee. 2026COA34. JUDGMENT AFFIRMED. A division of the court of appeals considers the scope of a local government’s authority to impose impact fees on new development under the Local Government Land Use Control Enabling Act of 1974 (the Act). The division concludes that, under the Act, a local government may impose impact fees as a condition of the issuance of a development permit and that the imposition of said fees is not
limited to projects that develop a raw parcel of land or substantially change the use of previously developed land.