Deborah Lee Nicholls, Petitioner v. the People of the State of Colorado, Respondent

Summary

The court affirmed the judgment upholding Nicholls’s convictions, holding that her husband’s statements to a cellmate were nontestimonial and therefore did not implicate the Colorado Confrontation Clause. It also held that, under the version of CRE 804(b)(3) in effect at trial, an unavailable declarant’s nontestimonial statement was admissible if it tended to subject the declarant to criminal liability, without an additional constitutional corroboration requirement. The court further upheld the admission of evidence concerning Nicholls’s reaction to her second child’s death and found no plain error in the brief testimony concerning that child’s cause of death.