Opinion ID: 4103829
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Andrews

Text: ¶18 The defendant in Andrews escaped from a community corrections facility. 871 P.2d at 1200. Police apprehended him a few weeks later and took him to a parole office for processing. Id. He escaped again, but this time he only made it to a nearby parking lot. Id. The defendant pled guilty to two felony escape offenses. Id. At the People’s urging, the trial court applied the general enhancement for committing a felony offense while under confinement as a convicted felon, then codified at section 7 18-1-105(9)(a)(V), 8B C.R.S. (1986 and 1992 Supp.), to the second escape conviction. Id. The court of appeals vacated the sentence. Id. ¶19 We granted review to address whether the general enhancement applied to escape crimes. Id. at 1199. Looking to the overall statutory scheme, we observed that if the general enhancement did apply, then every person convicted of class three felony escape would be subject to the enhancement. Id. at 1202 & nn.7–8. This “would effectively render meaningless” the legislature’s decision to classify escape as a class three felony—automatic application of the enhancement would shift the penalty range such that the relevant range would never correspond to the class three range. Id. at 1202. We noted this construction was contrary to our practice of reading statutes in their entirety to “giv[e] force and effect” to every provision. Id. (citing People v. Dist. Court, 713 P.2d 918, 921 (Colo. 1986); Ingram v. Cooper, 698 P.2d 1314, 1317 (Colo. 1985)). Finding the legislative intent “not so clear,” we ultimately resolved this interpretive difficulty by concluding the general enhancement did not apply. Id. at 1203. On our way to that conclusion, we observed that the legislature had “provided for enhanced punishment of crimes of escape elsewhere.” Id. Special enhancements required sentences for escape crimes to run consecutively to other sentences. Id. (discussing §§ 18-8-208.1, -209, 8B C.R.S. (1986)). ¶20 However, we limited our conclusion in Andrews to crimes of escape. We recognized that in cases involving sentencing for non-escape crimes, we had allowed “an element of an underlying offense [to] also provide the basis for an increased sentence, effectively mandating an escalated penalty for that offense.” Id. at 1202. In 8 those cases, we had distinguished escape as not subject to enhanced sentencing based on confinement as an aggravating circumstance. See id. at 1203 & n.10; see People v. Chavez, 764 P.2d 356, 358–59 (Colo. 1988) (treating confinement as aggravating circumstance for contraband-related offense, while acknowledging that it cannot apply as aggravating circumstance for escape); People v. Leonard, 755 P.2d 447, 449–51 (Colo. 1988) (same). Because the legislature took no action to the contrary, we inferred that the general enhancement did not apply to escape. Andrews, 871 P.2d at 1203. ¶21 Thus, Andrews was a traditional exercise in statutory interpretation. We attempted to discern the legislature’s intent, see id. at 1201 (“Legislative intent is the linchpin of statutory construction.”), and we tried to give “consistent, harmonious, and sensible effect to all parts” of the statutes, id. at 1203. Andrews did not establish that a special sentencing provision necessarily controls over a general one, nor did it set down any clear-statement rule for the legislature to overcome before we will apply multiple sentencing provisions to a single count. See People v. Leske, 957 P.2d 1030, 1045 n.20 (Colo. 1998) (“Our holding [in Andrews] was limited . . . to the crime of escape, and was not based upon the fact that proof of the sentence aggravator also tended to prove an element of the underlying offense.”). Andrews was based on the idiosyncratic results of applying the general enhancement to the unique crime of escape, and its reach is limited to that crime. ¶22 Accordingly, the Willcoxon court, on which the division below relied, erred in construing Andrews to mean that a special sentencing provision alone precludes application of the general enhancement. See 80 P.3d at 822. The court likewise erred in 9 concluding that the general enhancement in section 18-1.3-401(8)(a)(IV) cannot apply to second degree assault as described in section 18-3-203(1)(f) simply because the latter provides for consecutive sentencing. Id. As a result, we overrule Willcoxon. Because we overrule Willcoxon, we conclude the division below erred in using Willcoxon’s rationale.2 ¶23 We therefore reject Adams’s reliance on Andrews and apply the statutes as written. By their plain meaning, both enhancements apply here.