CLEAR CREEK COUNTY, Colo. —
Sally and Simon Glass clung to each other as the recorded voice of the former Clear Creek County Sheriff’s Office deputy who shot and killed their son, Christian Glass, rang out over the Georgetown courtroom on Wednesday.
Both the prosecution and the defense made their closing arguments in the murder trial for former Deputy Andrew Buen. Now, it's up to a jury to decide whether he is guilty of second-degree murder, official misconduct and reckless endangerment.
Glass should never have died that night, 5th Judicial District Attorney Heidi McCollum said in her closing argument. He died despite complying with officers' orders up until he picked up a knife in his car – the same knife Buen told him not to throw out the window.
“How could Christian win that night?” McCollum asked. “Maybe the better question is, how could Christian live that night?”
Prosecutors have maintained throughout the trial that Glass was experiencing a mental health crisis when he called 911 for help after getting his car stuck on a boulder in Silver Plume in June 2022.
Defense attorneys suggested that Glass was not experiencing a mental health crisis, and instead was drunk or on drugs when several officers engaged with him for more than an hour. They made that point again in their closing argument, saying evidence of driving under the influence was legal justification for forcing entry into Glass' car and Buen’s subsequent use of force.
After officers unsuccessfully tried to get Glass out of his car, Buen broke Glass' car window, shot him with bean bag rounds and used a Taser on him before shooting him five times in the chest.
Unreasonable actions and a deadly conclusion
Glass complied with everything he was told to do the night of his death up until he was attacked by law enforcement, McCollum told the jury. Most of these were orders from Buen.
“Mr. Buen ran that scene,” she said.
Glass offered to throw the weapons he’d identified to 911 dispatchers out of the car. Buen told him not to, McCollum said. Buen told Glass not to look at them or even touch them, she told the jury, so he didn’t.
Glass turned the car off and put both the keys and his hands on the dashboard when Buen told him to do so, she said. He was afraid, but he complied.
“He left the knife where it was because he complied. He did exactly what Mr. Buen told him to do, and because of that he got a gun pulled on him. Was that reasonable?” McCollum asked.
It was because Glass complied when Buen decided to get him out of the car that the deputy had no legal justification to do so, she said.
The question of whether Buen had the legal right to ask Glass to get out of the car, and then to force entry by breaking the window, will be key to the jury’s decision.
If Buen did not have legal justification to get Glass out of the car, his use of force would be, as prosecutors have described, “excessive and unreasonable.”
McCollum argued that Buen could have taken other steps to determine whether it was necessary to get Glass out of the car, like asking questions about what Glass had in the car and why or asking him why he was scared. She said Buen could have taken the time to contact Glass’ parents.
It was unreasonable, she said, not to take the time to make a phone call.
McCollum reminded the jury that they’d heard testimony from several witnesses, including nationally recognized police use of force expert Seth Stoughton, who said that time is on the side of law enforcement.
“No one was in danger. They'd been there for an hour, and no one was in danger. What would have been wrong with waiting two hours or three hours?” she asked.
Instead, Buen was looming, leering and staring down at Glass to the point of intimidation, McCollum said. His unreasonable actions escalated everything that happened that night, she said, even when Glass picked up his knife.
“At this point, Christian is like an animal in a cage that’s being poked and prodded,” McCollum said.
He took the only thing he had in his hand, which was that knife that Buen told him to keep, to defend the only safe place he had, she said.
He picked up that knife because he was afraid, but it was not a threat, McCollum argued. The knife never touched Georgetown Police Marshal Randy Williams, who was standing next to the car, she said. Even officers with a better view of Williams did not fire their guns.
“Deputy Buen knowingly caused the death of Christian Glass by shooting him,” McCollum said. “He used force to get into a car when he didn't have the authority to do it.”
Lazy police work, or a lack of evidence?
Defense attorneys for Buen were steadfast in their argument that the investigation into the former deputy’s conduct was shoddy police work, casting doubt on the prosecution's case.
Attorney Carrie Slinkard said agents from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation didn’t collect or document all the evidence that supports her suggestion that Glass was high or drunk the night he was killed. She mentioned the blood-soaked marijuana joint that was found in the driver’s seat of Glass’ car as proof.
“Ask yourselves, why did they not do it right? Because they were lazy, or slacking or didn't feel like it was necessary in a murder case?” she asked. “Or did they not do it right because they got direction from the District Attorney's Office, who from the very beginning of this case has tried to convince you that everything I have to say is tangential.”
Slinkard argued that Buen had every right to order Glass out of the car to arrest him on suspicion of DUI. When Glass didn’t comply, Slinkard said using higher levels of force was justified.
“They ignored drug paraphernalia that they didn't think was important to collect, because why does it matter? We're not investigating anything about Christian despite the fact that Christian’s behavior is what prompted the response from Deputy Buen,” she said.
Slinkard argued that the prosecution’s re-creations of the scene from the night Glass was shot are approximate and speculative. She urged the jury to recall the corrected body-worn camera video the defense showed them days earlier, which Slinkard said was more accurate to what Buen saw that night.
She also rejected the idea that Glass’ knife never contacted Williams, showing the jury two separate body camera videos of that moment. The chief was absolutely in danger, Slinkard said.
“They are picking and choosing what they want you to know,” she told the jury.
Buen’s use of lethal force was justified, she argued, it was not murder.
“This is not some rogue cop who's running around on the streets getting in trouble and having all these complaints,” Slinkard said. Glass demonstrated a clear intent to use force against officers, she said.
“The question is, was it reasonable to believe you had the authority to get him out of the car?” she asked the jury. “Absolute uncontested answer to that question is yes.”
The undisputed consequence
Whether Glass was suffering a mental health crisis or under the influence of drugs or alcohol the night of his death, neither side disputes that Buen shot and killed him.
“This ain’t a ‘who done it.’ You’ve seen ‘who done it,’ we know ‘who done it’ and Buen did it,” Deputy District Attorney Stephen Potts told the jury.
The question the jury needs to answer is whether Buen’s use of lethal force was excessive and unreasonable and whether he was justified in getting Glass out of the car in the first place.
“He shot Christian Glass to death in a car after an hour and 10 minutes where he had lots of opportunities for that not to happen," Potts said.
“Nobody wanted Christian to die that night,” Slinkard argued. “Action was taken in response to behaviors that put another man's life in danger. That's what he [Buen] believed. And it's true. And the evidence shows it.”
Now, the question of whether Buen’s use of lethal force was excessive and unreasonable is up to the jury to decide. Both sides urged the 12 jurors to rewatch the body camera videos they were given.
“If nothing else, watch his interview again. It's important, it's really important, and it's sincere, and it's his honest perception of what happened. Everything that he talks about in that video is the reason why he is not guilty of a crime in this case, as sad as it is,” Slinkard said.
“I want you to listen to what Deputy Collins on the hood of the car says after he [Glass] was shot,” McCollum implored. “He says, ‘Oh God, what did we just do?’”
Case history
In November 2022, a Clear Creek grand jury indicted Buen alongside his supervisor, former Clear Creek County Deputy Kyle Gould, who wasn’t at the scene that night. According to court documents, Gould was watching the encounter with Glass via a live-streamed body-worn camera. He then gave the order for Glass' driver's side window to be broken out.
The 5th Judicial District Attorney's Office offered plea deals to both former Clear Creek deputies in September 2023.
Gould pleaded guilty that November to duty to report use of force by peace officers - duty to intervene.
He was sentenced to two years' unsupervised probation and ordered to pay a $1,000 fine. As part of the plea agreement, Gould withdrew his POST certification and cannot work as a police officer or security guard in Colorado ever again.
Later that November, the DA’s office charged all six other officers on scene the night of Glass’s death for failing to intervene.
In May 2023, the Glass family was awarded $19 million in a settlement agreement with Clear Creek County, the Colorado State Patrol, the Georgetown Police Department and the Idaho Springs Police Department – all departments with officers on the scene that night. Among the many non-economic terms of the settlement, Clear Creek County has implemented a crisis response team to respond to calls. It is the largest police misconduct settlement in Colorado history.
View a full timeline of events in this case here:
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