Douglas County Judge's Errors Lead to Another Conviction Reversal

Colorado's Court of Appeals overturned John Allen's convictions for violating a restraining order, harassment, and violating bail bond conditions after finding that former 18th Judicial District Court Judge Patricia Herron failed to conduct an evidentiary hearing that the law required. The unsigned Feb. 21, 2025 order marked the third time in three months the state's second-highest court identified an error in one of Herron's cases.

Allen had been sentenced to four years in jail. The appellate panel, composed of Judges Rebecca R. Freyre, Karl L. Schock, and Grant T. Sullivan, found that Herron should have held a hearing before ruling on Allen's motion to suppress evidence gathered from his phone. "The trial court erred by refusing to hold an evidentiary hearing on the motion to suppress to determine whether Allen gave police consent to search his phone and whether he revoked consent before the police were able to complete the data extraction of his phone," the three judges wrote. "Whether Allen voluntarily consented to the search of his phone initially and whether he revoked that consent before the police were able to complete the data extraction are factual disputes that the trial court did not resolve."

The reversal is the latest in a lengthening list of appellate corrections tied to Herron's tenure on the Douglas County bench. Since 2021, the Court of Appeals has found problems in multiple criminal cases she handled, and in the past two years alone the court ordered reversals in more than half a dozen of her cases. Among the errors identified in prior cases: Herron allowed prosecutors to give a false impression to jurors about DNA evidence in a sex assault case, blocked a defendant from presenting his alibi to the jury, and allowed a defense attorney to withdraw without informing the defendant of her rights.

Herron served as an 18th Judicial District Court judge beginning in 2016, having previously worked in the Colorado Attorney General's Office, as an Aurora municipal judge, and as a judge in Oklahoma. Voters retained her in 2018 by a 3-1 margin after a citizen-led performance commission unanimously found she met performance standards. She retired at the end of 2023.

Her departure from the bench did not end her judicial role entirely. Chief Justice Monica M. Márquez subsequently hired Herron as a part-time senior judge despite her accumulating record of appellate reversals. The Colorado Judicial Department did not provide details about whether Herron continues to hear cases in that capacity. The Court of Appeals, along with the Colorado Supreme Court, operates out of the Ralph L. Carr Colorado Judicial Center in downtown Denver.

With Allen's convictions now vacated and the case sent back to the lower court, the question of what oversight exists for senior judge assignments and whether Herron remains on active cases is one the Judicial Department has yet to publicly answer.