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.
1 ¶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.
2 ¶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
3 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.
4 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
5 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
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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.
1 ¶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.
2 ¶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
3 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.
4 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
5 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,
6 957 (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.
7 ¶ 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
8 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
9 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
10 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
11 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.