Opinion ID: 2823809
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Monge

Text: Â¶16Â Â Â Â Â Since we decided Quintana, the Supreme Court has made clear that federal double jeopardy law does not extend to sentencing proceedings that result in enhancements for âpersistentâ offenders, strictly limiting its holding in Bullington to death penalty cases. Monge, 524 U.S. at 727â28. Monge analyzed the applicability of double jeopardy protections to sentencing proceedings under Californiaâs so-called âthree-strikesâ law. After the defendant in Monge had been convicted, the trial court judge enhanced his sentence based on prior convictions and prison terms. Id. at 725. The California Court of Appeal ruled that the evidence had been insufficient to trigger the sentence enhancement and a remand for retrial on the issue of sentence enhancement would violate double jeopardy principles. Id. at 725â26. The California Supreme Court reversed, reasoning: The [habitual criminality phase of a] trial is not a prosecution of an additional criminal offense carrying the stigma associated with a criminal charge; rather it is merely a determination, for purposes of punishment, of the defendantâs status , which, like age or gender, is readily determinable from the public record. Moreover, when, as here, the court has bifurcated the prior conviction issue, the defendant begins the prior conviction trial having already suffered the embarrassment of the present conviction. The marginal increase in embarrassment attributable to the prior conviction trial is not comparable to the embarrassment of an unproved criminal charge. People v. Monge, 941 P.2d 1121, 1129 (Cal. 1997), affâd sub nom. Monge v. California, 524 U.S. 721 (1998) (emphasis in original). When the prosecution merely presents evidence from the record of the prior conviction, the California Supreme Court observed, âthe defendant does not need to sit for weeks or months while witnesses describe in detail to a jury and the public the specifics of his alleged unlawful activities.â Id. Â¶17Â Â Â Â Â The United States Supreme Court agreed. It explained that its rationale in Bullington was limited to the âunique circumstances of a capital sentencing proceedingâ given âboth the trial-like proceedings at issue and the severity of the penalty at stake.â Monge, 524 U.S. at 732â33 (emphasis in original) (internal quotation marks omitted). While the trial-like features of the capital sentencing context were important in Bullington, the Court explained in Monge that any trial-like attributes present in noncapital sentencing proceedings are âa matter of legislative grace, notconstitutional command.â Id. at 734. The Court concluded that if it were to extend double jeopardy protections to noncapital sentencing hearings, it âmight create disincentives that would diminish these important procedural protections.â Id. 4 Â¶18Â Â Â Â Â Bound by our precedent in Quintana, the court of appeals has grappled with the Supreme Courtâs holding in Monge by concluding that while federal constitutional protections do not extend to habitual criminal proceedings, the double jeopardy protections found in the Colorado Constitution do. See, e.g., Porter, Â¶30; People v. Valencia, 169 P.3d 212, 222 (Colo. App. 2007) (citing Monge, 524 U.S. at 727â28; Quintana, 634 P.2d at 419). Another division avoided the issue by relying on the changes to the habitual criminal statute. Barnum, 217 P.3d at 911. This is the first time that we have addressed Mongeâs effect on Quintana.