People v. West.

2025 CO 61. No. 25SA193. Disqualification of a Prosecutor—Special Circumstances Justifying Disqualification—Appearance of Impropriety Insufficient—CRS § 20-1-107—People v. Loper—People v. Kent.

November 10, 2025

In this interlocutory appeal brought by the People, the supreme court reversed the district court’s order disqualifying both the individual prosecutor in this case and his entire office. The court concluded that the district court misapplied the law, and thus abused its discretion, in granting the defense’s motion for a special prosecutor.

Although the district court articulated the correct legal standard, its ensuing actions reflect that it applied the wrong one. The district court incorrectly focused almost exclusively on the appearance of impropriety engendered by an improper comment that the prosecutor made to the victim’s family in the hallway outside the courtroom. But appearance of impropriety ceased constituting sufficient grounds to disqualify a prosecutor in Colorado more than two decades ago. The district court also stated that the prosecutor’s comment went beyond the appearance of impropriety and implicated impropriety itself. But impropriety, without more, falls short of the governing standard as well. The district court never found that the comment constituted an extreme circumstance that rendered it unlikely that West would receive a fair trial. Nor could the court have made such a finding on the record before it. Because West did not demonstrate, through actual facts and evidence in the record, that the comment in question was an extreme circumstance that impugned the likelihood of his receiving a fair trial, he failed to satisfy his burden on his motion for a special prosecutor.

Accordingly, the district court’s disqualification order was reversed, and the matter was remanded to the district court for further proceedings.