Colorado prosecutors wrongly kept secret evidence that cast doubt on the guilt of a Colorado Springs woman while she was on trial for murdering her three children in a house fire more than 20 years ago, a judge found last month.
The revelation of prosecutorial misconduct comes four years in to Deborah Nicholls’ latest push — backed by the — to overturn her 2008 convictions for the first-degree murders of her three children, who died when the family’s house caught fire in the middle of the night on March 7, 2003.
During Nicholls’ jury trial, prosecutors relied heavily on findings from one Colorado Bureau of Investigation scientist who found that chemical testing results were consistent with an accelerant being used in the deadly fire. But the district attorneys kept secret a second opinion from another CBI scientist who found that the testing did not show the presence of an accelerant. That second scientist also agreed with a defense expert that some testing had been contaminated, according to an April 28 order from El Paso County District Court Senior Judge Michael Mullins.
“The suppressed exculpatory evidence in this case undermines the core foundation of the prosecution’s case — whether by neutralizing key witnesses or by demonstrating a lack of reliable laboratory confirmation — and thus meets the materiality standard,” Mullins wrote. “Accordingly, there exists a reasonable probability that the outcome (of the trial) would have been different had the evidence been disclosed.”
Prosecutors in argued that the second CBI scientist’s opinion — provided to the prosecution in the form of notes as they prepared for trial — was work product that did not have to be turned over the the defense under Colorado discovery rules, which govern evidence sharing in criminal cases. Mullins rejected that argument on the grounds that exculpatory information must always be shared.
“Clearly, based on the evidence at trial, the suppressed evidence is exculpatory, and it undermines the prosecution’s material witness and supports the defendantap expert analysis,” Mullins wrote.
The judge did not take action on Nicholls’ convictions in the April order but set the case for a hearing on May 27. At that hearing, Mullins could overturn Nicholls’ convictions and order she receive a new trial, or he could continue the case in order to hear the rest of her post-conviction relief claims, which her defense team presented to the court separately from the prosecutorial misconduct claims. A spokeswoman for Allen, Kate Singh, did not return a request for comment Wednesday.
Nicholls has long-maintained her innocence in the fire that killed her children, Jay, 11, Sophia, 5, and Sierra, 3. Prosecutors argued during the parents’ separate jury trials that Deborah and Tim Nicholls killed their children in an attempt to collect insurance money to fund their methamphetamine addiction. The parents were accused of spreading a highly flammable cleaning fluid around the house — and on their children’s pajamas — and then intentionally setting the home on fire.
Tim Nicholls allegedly confessed the murder plot to another prisoner while awaiting trial, and that man then became an informant and a key witness for the prosecution. Deborah Nicholls was not home when the fire started; her husband escaped the blaze with burns and injuries after jumping out a second-story window.
Prosecutors alleged Deborah Nicholls masterminded the plot while her husband carried it out and set the fire; she has suggested she may have left candles burning unattended in the home. Deborah’s murder convictions were upheld by the Colorado Supreme Court in 2017.
The newly discovered second CBI scientist’s notes were tucked in a “stack of papers in a cardboard box in a shelf at CBI’s warehouse,” said Janene McCabe, an attorney for Deborah Nicholls. A CBI analyst tasked with reviewing the case amid Nicholls’ 2022 innocence claim pulled the whole file for the review and then disclosed the entire file to the defense for the first time in 2024, McCabe said.
“It is really questionable as to whether she would have been found guilty and whether they would have proceeded to trial with this evidence,” McCabe said. “The prosecutor knew that this science they were relying on was contradicted by another expert at the lab.”
McCabe said Deborah Nicholls is both relieved and frustrated by the finding of prosecutorial misconduct.
“The wheels of justice turn very slowly,” McCabe said. “On the one hand she is very relieved that finally somebody looked at her case in a different perspective … on the other hand she is still sitting in (prison). And it has been 18 years.”
