A Denver man has been sentenced to 45 years in prison for his role in a botched marijuana robbery near Cheesman Park that left 28-year-old Michael Milligan dead in November 2023. Armoni Patterson pleaded guilty in July 2026 to conspiracy to commit second-degree murder and attempted first-degree assault, while his co-defendant, Travis Jackson, was convicted by a Denver jury of first-degree murder and now faces mandatory life without parole.
According to FOX31 Denver, the Denver District Attorney's Office announced Patterson's 45-year sentence through a social media statement. Patterson's attempted-assault plea stemmed from a separate, non-deadly shooting that happened about a month before the fatal Cheesman Park robbery, the outlet reported.
How the Fatal Robbery Unfolded
The deadly shooting happened on November 30, 2023, when Jackson and Patterson arranged to meet Milligan on the 800 block of North Gaylord Street under the pretense of buying four pounds of marijuana, according to an arrest affidavit cited by 9News. Milligan had obtained the marijuana using a medical marijuana card before attempting to sell it. When Jackson tried to rob him during the transaction, Milligan attempted to drive away and was shot inside his vehicle, the affidavit states.
His car crashed about half a block away before he was taken to the hospital, per the same account. Denver police had responded to reports of gunfire near Cheesman Park around 6:22 p.m. that evening. Investigators arrested Jackson on December 7, 2023, one week after the shooting, after tracking him through cell phone records and an eyewitness identification, the outlet reported.
A Second Shooting Seven Weeks Earlier
Patterson's case was also tied to an earlier, unrelated non-deadly shooting that occurred roughly a month before Milligan's killing. A statement from the Denver District Attorney's Office published on Facebook revealed that on October 7, 2023, 39-year-old George Gordon was struck and shot in a parking garage at 1509 North Pearl Street, and Patterson pleaded guilty to attempted first-degree assault for his role in that attack.
The prosecution of both Jackson and Patterson was led by Chief Deputy District Attorney Robert Axmacher and Senior Deputy District Attorney Michael Mangione, under Denver District Attorney John Walsh, according to court filings published by the Denver District Attorney's Office. A Denver jury separately convicted Jackson of first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder, second-degree murder, and first-degree assault for both the October and November 2023 attacks, as reported by The Denver Post. Jackson's sentencing is scheduled for September 18.
Court Records and Legal Framework
Colorado Judicial Branch docket records confirm Patterson was sentenced in Denver District Court Courtroom 5D under case numbers 2023CR7379 and 2023CR7380, while Jackson's cases carry the numbers 2023CR7385 and 2023CR7057. Both men had two separate open criminal cases stemming from the fall 2023 shootings, according to the court records.
Under Colorado Revised Statutes Section 18-18-406, selling or distributing marijuana outside state-licensed medical or retail dispensaries remains a felony drug offense, regardless of whether the seller holds a medical marijuana card. Colorado legalized commercial retail marijuana sales in 2012 but still enforces strict licensing requirements for any sale, which meant Milligan's private transaction fell outside the bounds of legal marijuana commerce even though he held a medical card.
Cheesman Park's Place in Denver's Crime Picture
Cheesman Park, a dense residential neighborhood directly east of Capitol Hill, ranked 45th out of 78 Denver neighborhoods for violent crime rate in 2023, averaging under four violent crimes per month, according to neighborhood crime data compiled by Denver Crimes using the Denver Open Data Catalog. That relatively low baseline underscores how unusual a homicide was for the area even as citywide violent crime trends worsened.
Research from the Common Sense Institute analyzing Denver Police Department statistics found that violent crimes against persons in Denver rose 43.5% between 2018 and 2022, a spike that prompted the department to launch targeted violent crime task forces. Milligan's death and the earlier Pearl Street shooting both occurred against that backdrop of rising citywide violence, even as Cheesman Park itself remained comparatively quiet.
