Laura Tellers won’t appear in Weld District Court until Feb. 2.
The appearance will come more than six months after her original trial date, which was postponed due to issues reviewing an extraction of Tellers’ cellphone. Her second trial date — which was slated to begin Jan. 6 — was also vacated late last month, again due to issues with the prosecution reviewing the phone extraction.
Now, more than 14 months after the private investigator was arrested on suspicion of helping an inmate smuggle drugs into the Weld County Jail, Tellers has no trial scheduled as the prosecution remains unable to review the phone extraction — this time due to the Colorado Supreme Court appeals process.
How’d we get here?
Police say Tellers provided 29-year-old Marquise Daniels meth and fentanyl in documents addressed to him during professional visits. Daniels would then use rubber bands to strap the drugs to himself and smuggle them back into the jail, according to an arrest affidavit.
Tellers was working as a private investigator for Sedlak Law, which was representing Daniels in a murder case. She has since been removed from the Sedlak Law website’s list of staff.
On Oct. 19, 2023, police met with Frederick Rios, 35. Rios had been an inmate at the Weld County Jail since a June arrest for aggravated robbery and had been roommates with Daniels as recently as September 2023.
Rios pointed to 28-year-old Ethen Butts — a friend of Daniels’ who was in a Lakewood Intervention Community Corrections Services facility — as the main supplier of the drugs, according to the affidavit. He said others — including his then-girlfriend Selenah Melendez — would pick up the narcotics from Butts, then drop them off or mail them to Tellers’ Fort Collins address, according to the affidavit. Police say Melendez later told them a friend, Shanice Sena, also helped transport the drugs.
After an April 25 arrest, Rios pleaded guilty to four counts of conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance in June and was sentenced to six years in prison for his role in the operation.
Melendez and Sena were both charged in February with two counts each of conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance. Both have since entered into plea deals and received two-year deferred sentences, meaning they don’t face immediate prison time and the charges will be dropped if they meet certain conditions.
Butts pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute fentanyl as part of a plea deal and was sentenced to two years of probation last year.
Tellers was arrested on Nov. 17 and faces two counts of conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance and four counts of conspiracy to introduce contraband, according to Colorado court records.
Lead defense attorney Lee Christian has insisted on Tellers’ innocence throughout court proceedings, saying she has never communicated with anyone in an attempt to get drugs into the jail. In a December hearing, he called Rios a “jailhouse snitch, who Tellers has never talked to.”
In a motion to dismiss filed in February, Christian said Rios fabricated the story because he knew offering police information on another case — whether true or not — would be his best chance at a reduced sentence for the crimes he was facing.
“Unable to post bond, he devised a plan to get out of jail and avoid responsibility for his cases,” Christian wrote in the motion.
He also noted that Tellers was willing to cooperate with the investigation prior to her arrest, but police made no effort to contact her.
While seemingly all the other players involved were moving through pleas, convictions and sentencing, Tellers is still in a state of limbo — originally due to court delays out of her control, and now due to an appeal her defense filed, at least in part, because of those original delays.
After pleading not guilty to all charges during a Feb. 13 status conference, Tellers’ original trial — slated to begin July 22 — was postponed due to issues with getting the prosecution Tellers’ phone records.
Police confiscated her phone when she was arrested. In a December hearing, District Judge Vincente Vigil — who is presiding over the case — required the production of additional phone records beyond what can be accessed by a basic phone extraction report, which includes some call and text data, as well as calendar appointments and other information.
Prosecutors didn’t receive the extraction report until a pre-trial readiness conference July 9 — less than two weeks before her trial was scheduled to begin.
At that hearing, Vigil found it was justified to postpone the jury trial and toll Tellers right to speedy trial until January, citing “unusual circumstances both in the factual nature as well as the complexity.”
That July hearing was a sign of things to come in future proceedings — the first in a string of issues and delay’s stemming from the phone.
“The phone, which has led to all of these issues,” Christian said in a hearing on Dec. 17. “Never has one piece of evidence led to so many issues.”
While going through the cellphone extraction in early August, investigator Michael Prill — who was assigned to go through the extraction for the prosecution — came across memos of visits Tellers had with Daniels as part of his representation. Prill stopped going through the records and notified all parties of what happened, according to several filings.
On Aug. 16, Vigil filed a motion temporarily restricting the prosecution from reviewing the files. He reversed the order on Aug. 30, allowing only Prill to peruse the files. Prill was then to submit the applicable phone records to the court before allowing anyone else with the district attorney’s office to review them, according to the motion.
On Sept. 12, Vigil filed a motion requiring Tellers’ defense — and counsel for all of her co-defendants — to return the extraction and prohibited them from further viewing any records.
“The Court further enters a protection order and forbids counsel on these cases and anyone that might be an agent of a defense team from discussing the contents of the Tellers Cellebrite extraction,” the order read.
On Dec. 17, Tellers’ defense filed a Rule 21 petition asking the Colorado Supreme Court to force the prosecution to show cause as to why the trial court did not err in:
Granting the prosecution’s request for a continuance in July without an evidentiary hearing and despite Tellers’ objection Not disqualifying the district attorney’s office from the case for possessing and reviewing private information when going through the original, unreacted version of the cellphone extraction Ruling that the defense could not review the extraction, which contains evidence that could possibly prove Tellers’ innocence.Just two days later, the Colorado Supreme Court issued an order requiring the prosecution to respond showing cause why they did not err in those three areas, adding that they also needed to show why the court denied Tellers’ motion to dismiss the case due to violation of her speedy trial right.
What’s next?
Prosecutors have until Thursday to file a response to the Rule 21 motion, according to the district attorney’s office. Once that response is filed, Tellers’ defense has 14 days to file a reply.
The Daniels case
Marquise Daniels, 29, has been in the Weld County Jail since January 2021 in connection with the December 2020 killing of Blaire McQueen. Daniels — and McKenzie Prader — lived with McQueen for a short time in 2020, before moving out in the months leading up to December.
On Dec. 18, Daniels and Prader broke into McQueen’s house to steal something in retaliation for speakers they believed McQueen stole, according to police.
McQueen was found dead in a back room of her home later that morning.
Prader was found guilty of aggravated robbery, first-degree assault with a deadly weapon and accessory to a Class 1 felony. She was sentenced to 25 years in prison in April.
In October 2023, Daniels overdosed in his cell and had to be revived with Narcan. He was found with meth and fentanyl in his cell just a week later, on Oct. 11, according to arrest records.
Daniels originally had a trial scheduled for late 2023, but that was postponed after the Tellers arrest. A second date for a jury trial in December 2024 was also postponed. His next court appearance is scheduled for a status conference Tuesday, Jan. 14. He also has a status conference scheduled for 8:30 a.m. Feb. 7, the same time and date as Tellers.
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