James Ashby becomes the first Colorado police officer convicted of murder on-duty in decades
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Former Rocky Ford police Officer James Ashbywas convicted Thursday of second-degree murder in the 2014 slaying of a man in his mother’s kitchen, becoming the first Colorado officer to be found guilty of murder in an on-duty death in decades.
Ashby had pleaded not guilty and had been on trial for more than a week in the slaying of 27-year-old Jack Jacquez. Jurors began deliberating midday Wednesday and returned Thursday morning before handing down their findings.
In all, the Otero County jury deliberated for about 11 hours before handing down their guilty verdict. Ashby, 33, is scheduled to be sentenced at 9 a.m. on Sept. 23 in La Junta.
When he was arrested a month after Jacquez’s Oct. 12, 2014, slaying, Ashby became the first Colorado policeman in over two decades to face a murder charge in an on-duty death. A Denver officer was acquitted in a 1992 shooting. It was not immediately unclear when the last Colorado police officer was convicted of murder in on an on-duty death, or if it had ever happened.
Investigators say Ashby followed Jacquez into the home of Jacquez’s mother on Oct. 12, 2014, and fatally shot him in the back. Ashby told investigators he thought Jacquez was a burglar, court records show, but officials say the former cop had no reason to believe Jacquez was committing a crime.
Jacquez’s mother, Viola, told The Denver Post that Ashby opened fire on her son inches from her face.
“It was one of those moments where you’re falling off a cliff,” she said in an interview after the shooting.
Investigators found Ashby fired two rounds at Jacquez, one of which severed his spine, heart and lung before lodging in his chest. A coroner’s report said he was “immediately rendered a paraplegic.”
Ashby’s other bullet sailed across Viola Jacquez’s home, including a room in which Jack Jacquez’s pregnant girlfriend was sleeping, before lodging in a wall at the other end during the 2 a.m. confrontation.
Ashby was arrested a month after the shooting and fired from the Rocky Ford police force. He said Jacquez was armed with a wooden baseball bat and that he feared for his safety when he opened fire.
The shooting sparked an outcry in Rocky Ford, a town of about 4,000 roughly 50 miles east of Pueblo. Protesters cited parallels to the police killings of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and Eric Garner in New York.
The Colorado Bureau of Investigation, in its review of the shooting, said Ashby lied about circumstances that led up to and followed the shooting, finding that many of his statements contradicted physical evidence and witness accounts.
Specifically, investigators found Ashby’s version of the shooting differed from that of a man who was riding with him during his 7 p.m.-to-5 a.m. shift the morning of the encounter.
At least four of Rocky Ford’s 10 officers have had problems in previous law-enforcement jobs or had criminal convictions that might have kept them from being hired at bigger departments or in other states, a Post analysis found.
Rocky Ford’s former police chief told The Post that Ashby’s records from his previous law enforcement job in Walsenburg, where he had been the subject of several internal affairs investigations, were not reviewed before he was hired. Officials instead relied on verbal recommendations from his former supervisors.
Eight days before shooting Jacquez, Ashby tackled a suspect over a holding cell bench, court documents show. He was found to have violated department policies in that encounter.
