The false testimony of a former Colorado Springs police officer led to a man accused of attempting to kill his girlfriend being found not guilty at trial, according to documents obtained by The Gazette.

Documents from the Colorado Springs Police Department show that on June 30, 2023, officers responded to a call for service at an apartment complex on Colorado Springs’ east side for reports of a stabbing.

When officers arrived they found a woman with several stab wounds. She told officers that her ex-boyfriend had been the one who had stabbed her.

Officer Noah Howard, a patrol officer who was with the Police Department for four years, was the initial officer of the investigation and testified at the trial in late January.

During his testimony, the transcript of which was acquired by The Gazette, Howard read the statement given to him by the victim which summarizes the allegations in the case:

“I was sitting in the living room watching TV when I heard a loud — a long bang and turned around to see (the defendant) standing in the doorway. He said b—-, you’re gonna die tonight and came rushing towards me.

“I thought he was going to start punching me when I got a glimpse of something in his hand. Then he began stabbing me at the same time saying b—-, I’m gonna kill you and b—-, tonight you’re gonna die. And then he started walking towards the front door to leave and then turned back around and said you stupid b—-, I hope you die and came back and stabbed me again. He then turned around and left running.”

Howard testified that the alleged victim gave the statement from the hospital where she was recovering from life-threatening injuries, according to the transcript of the testimony.

The alleged victim, whose name is redacted from the transcript, told law enforcement that she believed her ex-boyfriend, whose name also was redacted from the transcript, attempted to kill her because he was upset that she wouldn’t give him a ride that evening.

The alleged victim did not reply to interview requests from The Gazette.

Despite the statement from the alleged victim and a statement from another witness who separately told law enforcement that they saw the defendant stab his ex-girlfriend, the defendant was found not guilty at trial, according to documents obtained by The Gazette.

According to a CSPD memo describing an internal affairs complaint, the jury found the defendant not guilty due to not trusting the officers who testified, specifically Howard.

“I asked Mr. (Jeffrey) Harwood about the conversation with the judge and he advised that they had lost the trial and that the jury indicated that this was due to not trusting the cops, and that this mostly came from Officer Howard’s testimony,” Lt. Tim Stankey wrote in the interoffice memo, recounting his conversation with Jeffrey Harwood, who prosecuted the case for the 4th Judicial District Attorney’s Office. “Mr. Harwood indicated that the jury did indicate that they felt the defendant was guilty but could not come to that conclusion with the distrust of the officers who testified.”

Harwood added that Judge Deborah Grohs said she “could not believe that the jury would hold the police to such a high standard and find the defendant not guilty just based on that fact,” according to the interoffice memo.

The internal affairs investigation began in May after the defendant’s attorney, whose name is redacted, made a complaint to the Police Department that Howard “departed from the truth” several times during his testimony.

According to the transcript of the testimony and the internal affairs investigation, Howard created a false traffic stop report about a car found at the scene of the crime that was allegedly connected to the defendant.

The transcript of Howard’s testimony details that the court had excluded evidence of previous domestic violence accusations or convictions against the defendant at trial. Throughout Howard’s testimony, the defense attorney called for bench conferences to argue that Howard was intentionally attempting to “slip” evidence into the trial about previous domestic violence accusations.

This came to a head near the end of Howard’s testimony, when he stated that a van found at the scene of the crime believed to be associated with the defendant had been contacted in a traffic stop “fairly recent to this call,” according to the transcript of Howard’s testimony.

Following the statement, the defense attorney approached the court and requested a mistrial.

“That was an intentional statement made by Officer Howard. His demeanor throughout the entire cross-examination makes it very, very clear that he was attempting to slip in any information that he can,” the defense attorney said to Grohs, according to the transcript. “The court admonished him. He had previously made a statement. I don’t know where his confusion could have come in on this. Our position is that this is willful, and we are again requesting a mistrial.”

Grohs denied the mistrial request, but sent the jury out of the court to discuss the issue further and requested Howard clarify his testimony that the van was involved in a traffic stop. When asked by the defense attorney, Howard stated he didn’t know exactly when the traffic stop occurred, but that it was recent. Howard then tried to explain that he knew the van belonged to the defendant because of its involvement in a case before the stabbing where the defendant was accused of intentionally crashing his car into the victim’s car in an attempt to assault her.

When the court reviewed the allegations in the misdemeanor case, it became clear that the minivan was not involved in the misdemeanor case, and the defendant was accused of crashing a different car that evening, according to the transcript.

The Gazette obtained a copy of the affidavit for the defendant in his misdemeanor case, and there is no mention of the minivan discussed in Howard’s testimony. Court records for the misdemeanor case referred to in the transcript show that the defendant pleaded guilty to misdemeanor criminal mischief and received a 15-day jail sentence with credit for 218 days of time served and two years supervised probation.

After discussing the misdemeanor case, the court reviewed the vehicle history and discovered that the last time the van was “on CSPD’s radar” was Oct. 4, 2022, nine months before the alleged attempted homicide incident, and that the van was not registered to the defendant, according to the transcript.

Grohs summarized the issue before calling the jury back into the courtroom.

“So (the defense attorney) asked a question of the officer about whether or not he had any knowledge if this van was running, and in response to that the officer said yes. He made up something in an effort to not testify to what he thought was the connection between (the defendant) and the minivan, so he said it was the subject of a traffic stop,” Grohs said, according to the transcript.

“In our investigation that we’ve just conducted, it turns out that information isn’t true, that it wasn’t related to the misdemeanor.

“The thing is (Howard) made up a traffic stop. And the information that he provided that that gold minivan was involved in a recent traffic stop is inaccurate. There is no record of such a traffic stop.”

Despite this, Grohs said she did not believe the inaccurate statement rose to the level of a mistrial. When the jury returned, they were informed that “Howard testified to some inaccurate information,” and told the minivan was not involved in a traffic stop, nor did it belong to the defendant.

Grohs and Harwood stated after the trial that they did not feel Howard lied intentionally, with Harwood specifically saying to Stankey in the interoffice memo that Howard had been up the entire previous evening working and that he “had gotten so overwhelmed with his testimony that he didn’t know which way was up.

“I do not think that he was lying, I don’t think he was intentionally trying to make things up, I don’t think he was intentionally trying to mislead anybody.” Harwood said. “I think the poor kid just got so flustered that he kinda lost his mind.”

After the jury found the defendant not guilty, the case was sealed, according to documents obtained by The Gazette. The defendant is not in custody of the El Paso County jail or the Colorado Department of Corrections.

Throughout Howard’s testimony, according to the transcript, he was grilled by the defense attorney, who asked why Howard or other members of the Police Department didn’t follow up investigating certain aspects of the crime, accusing Howard of only relying on the statements given by the victim and witness.

Kate Singh, a spokesperson for the District Attorney’s Office, stated that “no such records exist,” when asked about the attempted homicide case and Howard’s testimony.

Law enforcement agencies in Colorado are told to respond with “no such record exists,” when asked about criminal cases that have been sealed due to the laws around cases being sealed in the state.

Cailtin Ford, a CSPD spokesperson, confirmed that had the investigation been completed, the recommendation by the investigation team would have been termination.

According to the internal affairs file, in November 2023 Howard was referred to internal affairs by a superior for knowingly entering an incorrect weight of narcotics that he seized during a call for service regarding a stolen motor vehicle.

The file lists issues with Howard’s conduct on this call for service, noting that Howard also failed to turn on his body-worn camera for the majority of the interaction and that he labeled the drugs to be destroyed, despite being evidence in a crime.

As the investigation into the incident continued, internal affairs determined that he had “departed from the truth” during his interview with his superiors about the incident. Specifically, the say Howard had informed his superiors he had, or was going to, do more follow-up investigation but never did.

Internal affairs is also critical of Howard’s response when asked by his superiors about the incident, saying he took “no accountability for his actions.”

Commander Hugh Velasquez in an interoffice memo written just over two months after Howard’s court testimony stated that the administrative insight team (AIT) were “overwhelmed by the sheer number of potential policy violations” Howard had committed in what was a “standard call for service for a patrol officer.”

“Officer Howard’s misconduct lies in two core areas, his work ethic, and the ability for him to be taken at his word. He clearly demonstrated he will guess at critical information (weight of the drugs and whether or not he contacted a witness) and more importantly he will intentionally place false information in a police record.”

Additionally, the interoffice memo states Howard had been placed on probation for poor performance evaluations.

The investigation led to the AIT recommending that Howard be terminated on May 10, but he resigned before being terminated.

Howard did not return a call for a request for comment from The Gazette.

The Police Department declined further comment.