Colorado judge erases man’s conviction in 2009 triple shooting, orders him freed

A Colorado judge on Wednesday erased a man’s convictions in a 2009 triple shooting at an Adams County bar and ordered he be immediately freed from prison, where he has been incarcerated for 15 years.

Prosecutors with the 17th Judicial District Attorney’s Office also moved to dismiss the criminal case against James Garner, 51, and said they would not pursue new charges against him.

“We are thrilled that Mr. Garner, an innocent man, will be able to return home,” said Jeanne Segil, one of his attorneys with the Korey Wise Innocence Project, an organization at the University of Colorado Boulder that provides free legal services to people who claim to be wrongfully convicted.

Garner, who appeared in court virtually from the Sterling Correctional Facility, lifted his head to the ceiling when Warner officially vacated his convictions. Garner had been serving a 32-year prison sentence.

“He’s overjoyed, in disbelief, feeling every imaginable feeling,” Segil said. “There’s a bittersweet component to it, too. He has been in prison for years for a crime he didn’t commit.”

Garner has long maintained his innocence in the 2009 triple shooting, and challenged his conviction with help from the Innocence Project. He claimed that he was convicted based on faulty eyewitness identification and that his attorneys at the time did not adequately defend him.

In a Wednesday court filing, prosecutors conceded Garner’s claims of ineffective counsel at several points during his 2012 jury trial.

“While each error, outlined above, standing alone, are insufficient to negate a jury’s finding of guilt, the People acknowledge that the cumulative effect of the errors outlined above do establish prejudice,” the filing reads.

Garner was convicted of assault and related charges in the triple shooting at a bar at West 52nd Avenue and Pecos Street on Nov. 22, 2009. He was there celebrating a birthday with several friends when a dispute broke out between Garner’s group of friends and a separate group at the bar around 1:30 a.m., according to court records.

Someone fired at least five shots, and three brothers in the other group were wounded, the records show. All three survived. They objected to vacating Garner’s convictions, prosecutors said Wednesday.

Law enforcement zeroed in on Garner as a suspect after finding a pair of glasses he’d dropped when he ran from the bar that night. None of the men who were shot were able to pick him out as the shooter until his jury trial in 2012, when he was seated with his attorneys at the defense table.

New research has shown that delayed eyewitness identification like that is particularly unreliable, Garner’s attorneys argued in court.

They presented evidence about the unreliability of eyewitness testimony during a two-day evidentiary hearing in early April. After that hearing, prosecutors asked for time to reconsider their position, and agreed to return to court Wednesday.

17th Judicial District Attorney Brian Mason did not immediately return a request for comment Wednesday.

Segil noted that Garner’s case went up to the highest levels of Colorado’s court system.

The Colorado Supreme Court in 2019 upheld the validity of the witnesses’ in-court identifications in a 4-3 decision, finding that the identifications of Garner were not “impermissibly suggestive.” The three dissenting justices found that first-time, in-court witness identifications should be handled with more legal guardrails to ensure a fair process.

“At many other stages this could have been rectified,” Segil said. “This never should have happened.”

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