Pueblo woman exonerated of murder sues county, officers

A woman exonerated of murder in 2025 after spending nearly 12 years in prison is suing Pueblo County, the Board of County Commissioners, the sheriff’s office, the city of Colorado Springs, and several individual law enforcement officers for alleged civil rights violations, malicious prosecution, and more.

Acacia Lyn-Darr, 47, was wrongfully convicted in 2012 of the 2009 murder of Robert Piserchio, largely based on false testimony by Matthew Barnes — Lyn-Darr’s boyfriend at the time — and another witness, which the lawsuit alleges were coerced by law enforcement.

Piserchio’s body was found in the early morning hours of Dec. 10, 2009, by firefighters summoned to his Stonemoor Hills home by an alarm. Evidence showed he had been bound at the wrists and ankles with duct tape, stabbed and beaten before his body was set on fire.

Lyn-Darr was connected to the case after accepting checks that were stolen from the victim’s house by Aaron Wilkerson, the real killer who is serving a life sentence for Piserchio’s murder, and attempting to cash them at a Colorado Springs Safeway.

Wilkerson later told Lyn-Darr’s counsel during an interview at the Colorado State Penitentiary that Lyn-Darr was not present at the scene, nor were Barnes or co-defendant Brandon Armijo.

Wilkerson said he was the only one there and that he never intended to make Lyn-Darr a party to his criminal activity.

On Feb. 11, 2025, Lyn-Darr’s convictions were vacated. Three months later, the state moved to dismiss the case against her, and Judge Thomas Flesher granted the motion.

Attorneys for Lyn-Darr also allege several violations of Colorado’s 2020 Enhance Law Enforcement Integrity Act, a police accountability and reform law.

After Lyn-Darr’s conviction was vacated, she filed a petition with the state seeking $830,000 in compensation under a seldom-used 2013 state law that allows exonerated individuals to seek payment of up to $70,000 for each year they’re incarcerated for a false conviction.

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser is opposing her petition for relief, and the court process is ongoing, AG’s Office spokesman Lawrence Pacheco told the Chieftain.

Key witness recanted false testimony given under duress

Lyn-Darr was convicted in 2012 based largely on the allegedly coerced testimony of her then-boyfriend, Barnes.

During Barnes’s eight-hour interview with investigators, he confessed to details of the crime that detectives knew to be untrue, and corrected those errors after being fed non-public information by investigators, the suit alleges.

Barnes maintained his innocence until approximately four hours in, when the recording device stopped recording for no explicable reason for about 30 minutes.

The camera “conveniently” came back on as Barnes gave his confession, according to the suit, but the moment he switched from maintaining his innocence to “admitting his guilt” was not caught on camera.

During the second recorded part of Barnes’ interrogation, he attempted to provide details of what happened, but did not know the details as he was not there. Pueblo County Sheriff’s Office investigators provided him with details, including photographs of the crime scene, to get him to modify his account to match the physical evidence, according to Lyn-Darr’s attorneys.

No other evidence connected her or Barnes to the scene of the murder, nor to the actual murderer’s vehicle, which Wilkerson used to get to and from the scene. Barnes later told his attorney the confession was false and he had not been at the scene of the murder.

However, to avoid facing life in prison, Barnes agreed to testify against Lyn-Darr and plead guilty to second-degree murder for a sentence of 30 years in prison. He admitted seven years later, in 2019, to Lyn-Darr’s counsel that his “confession” had been false, and agreed to testify to that in a 2024 post-conviction hearing.

Read the full article at The Pueblo Chieftain.