An 8th Judicial District judge ruled the perjury trial against Susan Holmes to be a mistrial Monday afternoon before a full jury had even been selected.

Holmes has been charged with perjury and attempting to influence a public servant in a case stemming from her filing of an extreme risk protection order petition against a Colorado State University police officer.

The felony case is tied to her filing of a "red-flag" petition against Cpl. Philip Morris, a CSU police officer who, with a Fort Collins Police Services officer, shot and killed her son, Jeremy Holmes, in 2017. Former District Attorney Cliff Riedel has ruled that the shooting was justified.

Holmes appeared in court in Fort Collins early Monday morning for the kickoff of her case, which was scheduled to run until Thursday. The court took a recess around noon after several hours of working through the roughly 70 jurors gathered to bring the number down to the 13 required.

When the court reconvened at around 1:30 p.m., judge Stephen Jouard asked if any of the jurors had had any contact between any of the people involved in the case. When one potential juror raised a hand, Jouard, the potential juror and both attorneys stepped behind closed doors. When they returned, Jouard asked once again if anyone had spoken to any of the parties involved or overheard any conversations. One other juror raised a hand and was escorted behind the courtroom doors to discuss what they heard.

For the next nearly two hours Jouard, deputy district attorney Robert Axmacher and Holmes' attorney Jonathan Greenlee spoke away from the potential jurors about the situation. When they returned once again, Jouard apologized to the crowd of potential jurors and thanked them for coming out before ruling a mistrial in the case.

"I assure you this is not typical for the trial process," he said.

It was not made clear as to who the potential juror spoke with or what was said during the encounter.  No information was provided on when another potential trial would be scheduled.