The Colorado Court of Appeals on Thursday reversed the conviction of a Colorado Springs woman found guilty of murder in the death of her 11-year-old stepson, who went missing for nearly two months in 2020 before his body was discovered under a bridge in Florida.
The three-judge panel sent the prosecution of Letecia Stauch back to the lower court for retrial because her attorneys were unable to dismiss a biased juror who ultimately deliberated on the case, .
“Our Supreme Court has consistently recognized the type of error implicated here — a violation of the defendantap right to an unbiased jury — as so harmful that it warrants automatic reversal,” Court of Appeals Judge Neeti Pawar wrote in the decision’s majority opinion.
The juror was related to a deputy district attorney in the Fourth Judicial District Attorney’s Office in El Paso County — which prosecuted the case — and should have been dismissed automatically, Pawar wrote.
Kate Singh, a spokesperson for the district attorney’s office, called the court’s opinion “extremely disappointing” in an emailed statement to The Denver Post.
“We remain undeterred in our search for ultimate justice in this case,” Singh said. “We will consult with the attorney general’s office about seeking review of today’s decision in the Colorado Supreme Court and, if necessary, we will be prepared to present the case to a new jury here in El Paso County.”
The original jury found Letecia Stauch guilty of first-degree murder in the death of her stepson, Gannon Stauch, court records show. She was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Gannon disappeared from his family’s Colorado Springs home in January 2020, and his body, which had been shot and stabbed, was found months later inside a suitcase under a bridge near Pensacola, Florida. Stauch was the last person to see him alive.
A neighbor’s surveillance cameras captured Stauch and Gannon leaving the home together on the morning of Jan. 27, 2020. Stauch returned home, alone, several hours later.
Stauch asked her teenage daughter to purchase cleaning supplies on the day Gannon disappeared, including baking soda and trash bags, according to her arrest affidavit. She told police that the boy had failed to return from a friend’s house, but couldn’t name the friend or the friend’s parents.
The stepmother changed her story several times throughout the investigation, at one point claiming that an intruder had held her captive and abducted Gannon, the affidavit stated. Stauch often provided details that only the killer would know, including explanations for evidence that had not been publicly released.
Investigators believe Stauch hid Gannon’s body in a remote area along the border of El Paso and Douglas counties before moving the body into a suitcase and driving it in a rented cargo van to Florida, where she tossed the suitcase off a highway overpass.
The boy’s body was found by a construction crew on March 17, 2020 — more than 1,000 miles from home. He had been shot in the jaw and stabbed in the chest and back, Sgt. Jason Yoder with Florida’s Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Office testified in Stauch’s September 2021 preliminary hearing. Gannon also suffered a skull fracture and had cuts on his arms and hands that appeared to be defensive wounds, Yoder said.
A bullet found in the 11-year-old’s head was matched to a gun found in the family’s Colorado Springs home, which had DNA on it from Stauch and two other people, El Paso County sheriff’s Sgt. Rosario Hubbell testified.
Investigators found evidence of blood splatter on Gannon’s bedroom walls and bloodstains on his mattress, carpet and bedroom floor. Traces of blood were also found on the family’s garage floor and on the bumper of Stauch’s car.
“Because we conclude that the trial court committed structural error by denying Stauch’s challenge for cause to a biased juror, who deliberated, we reverse the convictions and remand for a new trial,” Pawar wrote in the decision.
Jurors must not be related within three degrees to the elected district attorney of the county in which the trial is taking place or to any deputy district attorney in that office, Pawar wrote. The juror must be automatically removed, regardless of whether their relative appeared or participated in the case.
The biased juror’s son-in-law worked as a deputy district attorney for the Fourth Judicial District Attorney’s Office and disclosed that on his questionnaire during jury selection, according to the appeals court decision. Stauch’s attorneys tried to challenge him for cause but were denied.
“I think that there is, you know, a difference between somebody saying, I have a son or daughter who works for the police, then (sic), I have a son-in-law who works for the DA who is actually trying the case,” an unidentified defense attorney said in a court transcript included in the appeal decision
El Paso County District Court Judge Gregory Werner asked the then-potential juror how long his son-in-law had worked for the district attorney, if he had discussed the case with his son-in-law and whether he would be influenced by the desire to have the case work out better for his son-in-law, according to the decision.
The man’s answers were not provided, but he was ultimately not dismissed.
One Colorado Court of Appeals judge agreed that the trial court erred in not dismissing the juror, but argued that Stauch waived her right to a new trial when her attorneys did not use their available peremptory challenges to dismiss the biased juror, according to the minority opinion in the decision.
“By electing not to remove biased jurors peremptorily, defendants participate in their seating every bit as much as the trial judges who erroneously fail to remove them for cause,” Judge J. Bernard wrote.
