A federal judge has ruled that Colorado Springs police officers coerced a man during a June 2025 arrest by tasing him at least five times and pressing a gun to his head while threatening to kill him, blocking prosecutors from using the statements he made in that moment as evidence against him. The ruling came in the case of Anthony Miranda, who was indicted by a federal grand jury for being a felon in possession of a firearm after officers recovered a handgun during his arrest.
According to Colorado Politics, the encounter began when Colorado Springs officers responded in June 2025 to a theft call from a plumbing store in the 3000 block of Mallard Drive. Plumbing store staff identified a man and a woman as the theft suspects, and Officer Ryan Paine located Anthony Miranda and Samara Yingling-Winbush within a mile of the store. When officers tried to handcuff him, Miranda ran.
A Chase Divided Into Three Legal Stages
In an August 24, 2026 order, Senior U.S. District Judge William J. Martínez divided the encounter into three distinct chronological stages to weigh Fifth Amendment voluntariness and Fourth Amendment seizure arguments, according to a judgment reviewed by CaseMine. Martínez held that Officer Paine had reasonable suspicion to detain Miranda and later probable cause to arrest him, and he found Miranda's statements to Paine before detention were admissible. But the judge found the second stage of the encounter — the chase and arrest itself — was coercive.
Martínez wrote that officers had tased Miranda at least five times and that Officer Kirby threatened to kill him while pressing his gun barrel against Miranda's head. As a result, the judge suppressed Miranda's statements made during that stage as evidence, ruling they were made involuntarily. Defense attorney David R. Jones had argued that Miranda's statements were involuntary after being tased, tackled, and threatened with a gun, and that Miranda had not voluntarily waived his right to silence.
Miranda Warning Becomes the Turning Point
The case took a different turn once Officer Daniel Mork confiscated items from Miranda, including a gun, and informed him of his rights to remain silent and to consult an attorney. Mork's reading of the Miranda warning and his efforts to calm Miranda at the patrol car served as what the judge called “intervening events” that purged the coercive impact of the earlier stage, per the same judgment. That meant Miranda's subsequent incriminating statements about the handgun, made after the warning, were ruled voluntary and admissible — even though they followed the tasing and death threat by only a short span of time.
Miranda had moved to bar use of both the handgun and his statements as evidence, arguing that Officer Paine lacked reasonable suspicion to detain him in the first place. Martínez rejected that argument regarding the initial stop but sided with the defense on the coercion question tied to the chase and arrest. The result is a split ruling: some statements suppressed, others allowed, depending on exactly when during the encounter they were made.
Judge Rejects Bid for Bench Trial
On August 27, 2026, Martínez denied a request from defense counsel to convert Miranda's upcoming trial into a bench trial, ruling that a jury would be “best positioned to determine the credibility” of Officers Paine and Mork regarding the suppression issues, the outlet reported. Both officers had testified during the August 2026 suppression hearing. Rather than proceed to that trial, the defense and government reached a plea deal, and Martínez is expected to accept Miranda's guilty plea later in September.
Separately, El Paso County prosecutors charged Samara Yingling-Winbush, who was detained alongside Miranda, with misdemeanor theft, though that charge was later dismissed. The felon-in-possession charge against Miranda, filed under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), carries a maximum statutory penalty of 15 years in federal prison following sentencing enhancements enacted under the 2022 Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, according to Medvin Law.
A Department Already Facing Scrutiny Over Tasers
The ruling lands against a backdrop of mounting legal exposure for the Colorado Springs Police Department over taser use. In July 2025, the city approved a $3.2 million settlement — the largest police misconduct payout in its history — to resolve a federal lawsuit after officers repeatedly tased 27-year-old Jeffrey Melvin Jr. during a 2018 encounter that led to his death, shocking him eight times in 90 seconds, according to AP News.
State law places real limits on how officers can use force during arrests. Under Colorado Revised Statutes § 18-1-707, peace officers are legally required to use nonviolent means when possible, turning to physical force only when nonviolent measures would be ineffective in making an arrest, preventing escape, or preventing imminent injury, per Justia Law. Separately, under C.R.S. § 18-8-802, officers who witness another officer using force exceeding lawful standards are required to intervene and file a written report to a supervisor within 10 days, according to guidance from Clear Creek County.
Colorado also tightened restrictions on how suspects can be physically restrained. House Bill 24-1372, enacted in June 2024, amended § 18-1-707 to place strict statutory limits on law enforcement's use of prone physical restraints on detained individuals, according to the Colorado Intergovernmental Risk Sharing Agency. Martínez noted that officers held Miranda face-down in the dirt during the coercive second stage of his arrest — the same period during which he was tased and threatened at gunpoint.
Internal Policy Versus What Happened on Mallard Drive
The Colorado Springs Police Department's own use-of-force policy directs sworn officers to apply de-escalation techniques when feasible, use only objectively reasonable force, and immediately cease physical force once a suspect's resistance decreases or ends. Departmental statistics show the scale of how often force comes into play: Colorado Springs officers responded to 245,856 calls for service in 2024, with roughly 37% of sworn officers filing at least one use-of-force report that year, according to the department's Data Hub.
What remains unresolved is whether Officer Kirby faces any internal departmental review over pressing his gun to Miranda's head and threatening to kill him. The dossier of court filings and reporting reviewed for this story does not indicate the outcome of any such review. Hoodline previously covered a separate case in which a Colorado Springs police task force used a taser during a foot chase to catch a fleeing robbery suspect, underscoring how frequently the department's taser tactics draw scrutiny even outside the courtroom.
