On January 1, 2000, 14-year-old Lorenzo Montoya accepted a ride from 16-year-old Nicholas Martinez, having no idea it would connect him to the murder of 29-year-old Emily Johnson. The police almost immediately turned their attention to Lorenzo, Nicholas, and Nicholas’ cousin, Lloyd Martinez. The three boys were charged with first-degree murder and prosecuted as adults.

Although he was only a 14-year-old child at the time, Lorenzo was interrogated by the police for over two hours with detectives yelling, pounding the table, and blatantly lying to him about the crime itself and the evidence they had collected. Lorenzo’s mother was present for only a fraction of his coercive questioning, and he never had a lawyer present. Lorenzo was adamant that he had nothing to do with Emily Johnson’s death throughout his interrogation and the remainder of his case. Staying consistent in his response, Lorenzo denied any involvement in the murder more than 60 times throughout the interrogation. Hours passed before Lorenzo finally crumbled under the stress and pressure of the detectives’ outbursts and lies. Lorenzo gave the detectives what they wanted to hear; He gave them a statement admitting he and the Martinez cousins were involved after all. The pressure to confess led Lorenzo to admit involvement in a murder he had nothing to do with, at the urging of the police who abused their power and coerced a confession out of a child.

Unfortunately, Lorenzo story is not an outlier in child interrogation. As noted by the Buffalo Law Review, “[f]ew reasonable adults would argue that a thirteen-year-old child is as suitable as an adult to join the military, marry, vote, or receive other privileges and responsibilities reserved for adulthood…One substantial difference between adults and children is how they experience and understand the significance and resulting consequences of police interrogation.”  It is not uncommon for highly suggestible individuals, including juveniles and children, to give false confessions due to their blind trust in authority and police actions that fall ever so slightly outside the legal definition of coercive or fundamentally unfair.  A 2017 UCLA Law Review article further outlined the dangers of child interrogation techniques and the likelihood of coercing a false confession from juveniles. The article explains how compounding factors like police interrogation tactics, adolescents' diminished competence to understand and exercise their rights, and adolescents' vulnerability to coercion and proneness to confessing falsely, give youths a heightened risk of being unreliable and unconstitutionally compelled.

1. You Have the Right to Remain Thirteen: Considering Age in Juvenile Interrogations in J.D.B. v. North Carolina, 60 Buffalo L. Rev. 559, 559
2. Symposium on Coercion: An Interdisciplinary Examination of Coercion, Exploitation, and The Law: ii. Coerced Confessions: The Decision to Confess Falsely: Rational Choice and Irrational Action, 74 Denv. U.L. Rev. 979, 1117
3. Taking Back Juvenile Confessions, 64 UCLA L. Rev. 902, 910

Lorenzo was an unwilling example of this vulnerability as he went from an unwavering claim of innocence to an admission of involvement within the hours he was accosted with false information and emotional manipulation by the Denver Police Department.

In 2011, Attorney Lisa Polansky, working with the Center for Juvenile Justice and Polansky Law Firm, PLLC, took on Lorenzo’s case pro bono. She and her Team uncovered several glaring issues in Lorenzo’s trial. Among the notable issues, Ms. Polansky and her investigator discovered that Lorenzo’s trial lawyer failed to call Nicholas Martinez’s mother as a witness, despite her explicit assertions that the jacket found at the crime scene belonged to her son, Nicholas, and not to Lorenzo.

Lorenzo’s trial lawyer additionally failed to investigate Lorenzo’s mental capacity, even though he was a special education student at school. Ms. Polansky’s Team found that Lorenzo received a score of 69 on an IQ-test conducted one year before the murder, indicating low mental function. These concerns led Ms. Polansky to dig further into Lorenzo’s false confession and imprisonment.

In December of 2013, a judge granted Ms. Polansky’s request for additional DNA testing on items found at the crime scene. The test results showed Lorenzo’s DNA was not found on the murder weapon, or anywhere at the scene of the crime, discrediting the prosecution’s claims that Lorenzo was present during the murder.

On June 16, 2014, the Denver County District Attorney’s Office agreed to vacate Lorenzo’s convictions and dismiss the charges, in return for a guilty plea to a charge of being an accessory after the murder for having accepted a joyride in Ms. Johnson’s stolen vehicle the day following her death. As he was sentenced to 10 years in prison, but had served 13 years, Lorenzo was released immediately.

Without Ms. Polansky’s determination, Lorenzo would still be serving time for a crime he had no part in, primarily a result of his false confession after being interrogated as a child, without a parent present, and without the ability to consult a lawyer.

Lorenzo’s 2014 exoneration was a catalyst for change in Colorado’s legislature, as outraged citizens took a stand against child interrogation tactics like those used against Lorenzo. In May 2023, Governor Jared S. Polis signed House Bill 23-1042 into law. Titled “Admissibility Standards for Juvenile Statements,” the act makes any statement or admission obtained during interrogation of a juvenile, during which law enforcement knowingly communicated untruthful information to the juvenile, presumptively inadmissible against the juvenile at trial, with limited exceptions. Additionally, the act requires electronic recordings to be made of all juvenile interrogations and directs the development of a training program for law enforcement officers on proper juvenile interrogation.

Now celebrating more than 10 years of freedom since his exoneration, Lorenzo has continued to fight for justice. His federal civil rights lawsuit against the city and county of Denver as well as the the Denver police officers involved in his case remains currently pending.