Court Opinion

ID: 9792589
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:31:19.517045+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:43.787583
License: Public Domain

DUBOFSKY, Justice,
specially concurring:
I specially concur in the judgment. On December 20,1982, a majority of this Court ruled in Watkins v. People, 655 P.2d 834, that an “understandingly made plea of guilty requires that the record affirmatively show the defendant’s understand*698ing of the critical elements of the crime to which the plea is tendered,” and that, “to satisfy this requirement, the court should explain the critical elements ‘in terms which are understandable to the defendant.’ People v. Cumby, 178 Colo. 31, 33, 495 P.2d 223, 224 (1972).” At 837. In Watkins, the trial court failed to explain any of the elements of the crime of conspiracy to commit escape by a felon.
Although the court here did not specifically advise the defendant of the elements of the ulterior crime of theft at the time the 1973 plea to burglary was taken, the defendant reconfirmed his 1973 plea at a providency hearing in 1978. By then, he had been informed on three occasions of the elements of burglary and theft. Because of the particular facts of this case, I think it is distinguishable from Watkins v. People, and therefore I concur with the result reached by the majority.