Peo v. Swayzer, 22CA1410

Myron David Swayzer was serving an intensive supervision parole (ISP) sentence for a prior sexual assault conviction, which required him to wear an ankle monitor.
Swayzer fled from a traffic stop, and his parole officer later found his ankle monitor with a cut strap in another vehicle.
Swayzer was charged with unauthorized absence under Colorado law for tampering with his electronic monitoring device, as well as two traffic offenses in a separate case; these cases were joined for trial.
The jury convicted Swayzer on all charges, with a special finding that his unauthorized absence was while serving a sentence for sexual assault—a fact that elevated the charge to a felony.
Swayzer appealed, primarily challenging the admission of the name of his prior offense and the trial court’s denial of a supplemental jury questionnaire.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Admissibility of prior offense name	Required to prove felony status of charge; highly probative	Should be excluded as prejudicial; statute number alone sufficed	Admission was proper; probative value outweighed prejudice
Denial of supplemental jury questionnaire	Judge’s voir dire sufficient to assess jury bias	Questionnaire necessary to identify biased jurors, especially after mistrial	Denial was within trial court's discretion; procedure sufficient
Whether reference to sexual assault unduly prejudiced jury	References were limited and relevant to charge enhancement	Repeated references made sexual assault the main focus, prejudicing trial	References were appropriately limited to legal purposes
Sufficiency of evidence for sentence enhancer	Jury had sufficient evidence that Swayzer was on parole for a qualifying offense	Statute number should suffice; naming offense misled jury	Evidence and procedure complied with statutory requirements

People v. Rath, 44 P.3d 1033 (Colo. 2002) (discusses CRE 403 balancing test and deference to trial court's evidentiary rulings)
Yusem v. People, 210 P.3d 458 (Colo. 2009) (addresses exclusion of evidence with scant probative force)
People v. Silva, 987 P.2d 909 (Colo. App. 1999) (prosecution’s discretion in presenting its case, subject to evidentiary balancing)