Peo v. Gonzales

── Peo v. Gonzales ── Court: Colorado Court of Appeals Date: May 14, 2026 Category: General 23CA0013 Peo v Gonzales 05-14-2026 COLORADO COURT OF APPEALS Court of Appeals No. 23CA0013 Weld County District Court No. 20CR1792 Honorable Vincente G. Vigil, Judge The People of the State of Colorado, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Joseph Junior Gonzales, Defendant-Appellant. JUDGMENT AFFIRMED Division III Opinion by JUDGE HARRIS Dunn and Moultrie, JJ., concur NOT PUBLISHED PURSUANT TO C.A.R. 35(e) Announced May 14, 2026 Philip J. Weiser, Attorney General, Jacob R. Lofgren, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Denver, Colorado, for Plaintiff-Appellee Megan A. Ring, Colorado State Public Defender, Michael C. Mattis, Deputy State Public Defender, Denver, Colorado, for Defendant-Appellant ¶1 A jury found defendant, Joseph Junior Gonzales, guilty of first degree murder.1 On appeal, Gonzales contends that the trial court erred by denying his motion to suppress evidence and by failing to impose sufficient restrictions on the jury’s access to video exhibits. We affirm. I. Background ¶2 In September 2020, Abdul Jefferies was fatally shot at a motel in Evans, Colorado. The motel’s video surveillance system and police pole cameras recorded some of the relevant events. ¶3 One video showed a man wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt and a mask leave room 219 and, joined by two others, walk to room 142. From there, a camera recorded the three men climbing stairs to a balcony where Jefferies was standing. The man in the gray sweatshirt pulled out a gun and shot Jefferies multiple times in the head and back. The three men fled down a corridor back to room 219. 1 Gonzales was also charged with possession of a weapon by a previous offender. After being convicted of murder in a bifurcated trial, Gonzales entered an Alford plea to the weapons charge. 1 ¶4 When police responded to the motel, they quickly apprehended Manuel Edwards, a police informant. He admitted to being one of the men shown on the surveillance videos, and he identified the shooter as “JoJo.” ¶5 Gonzales was also arrested at the motel, and, during a custodial interview, he made inculpatory statements about his potential motive for the shooting. ¶6 The prosecution charged Gonzales with first degree murder. The primary issue at trial was the identity of the shooter. To establish that the shooter was Gonzales, the prosecution presented, among other evidence, testimony from Jefferies’s girlfriend, video footage, a recorded jail call, and the recorded interviews of Gonzales and the informant.2 ¶7 Jefferies’s girlfriend testified that she lived at the motel in room 142. Just before the shooting, three men came to her room looking for Jefferies. The girlfriend recognized one of them as “JoJo,” a man she had previously seen at the motel a “handful of times.” The girlfriend was aware that JoJo had a conflict with 2 The informant failed to appear at trial and the parties agreed to admit his recorded interview into evidence. 2  Jefferies; the day before the shooting, JoJo told the girlfriend that he intended to resolve the conflict with “a knife or a gun” if necessary. About a minute after the three men left her room, she heard gun shots. At trial, the girlfriend identified Gonzales as “JoJo.” ¶8 During his interview, the informant told the officers that JoJo shot Jefferies with a revolver. When police searched room 219, where the three men had retreated after the shooting, they found a revolver hidden in the mattress. Testing later established “strong support” for the conclusion that Gonzales’s DNA was on the revolver. ¶9 At the time of the shooting, both Gonzales and the informant were on parole and