Court Opinion

ID: 9786606
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 23:59:03.698553+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:36:46.718658
License: Public Domain

Justice COATS,
dissenting.
While I agree that the court of appeals went too far in declaring crimes with different elements incapable of proof by identical evidence, I would nevertheless affirm its judgment on other grounds. I believe the majority errs in treating guilty pleas as requiring evidentiary support at all, much less as being supported by evidence that is identical to evidence supporting other guilty pleas. Of at least equal significance, however, I believe the majority's explanation for finding section 18-1-408(8) of the revised statutes to be applicable to guilty pleas substantially alters the meaning of "identical evidence." Both because I believe the majority's interpretation of "identical evidence" is unnecessary in this case and because I do not agree with that interpretation in any event, I respectfully dissent.
Although it is not entirely clear from the words of the statute itself, we have long held that the "supported by identical evidence" prerequisite of subsection (8)'s election option applies equally to its prohibition of consecutive sentences for offenses mandatorily joined as acts constituting a single criminal episode. See People v. Anderson, 187 Colo. 171, 529 P.2d 310 (1974). As the majority easily demonstrates, the statute in no way evidences a legislative intent to exempt guilty pleas from this sentencing limitation or to permit longer sentences for convictions acquired by guilty plea, and the very suggestion of such a policy choice appears to be a straw man to be knocked down. Policy notwithstanding, however, guilty pleas, by their very nature, simply cannot be controlled by this statute.
Guilty pleas, by their very nature, are not based on evidentiary proof. They result from a defendant's admission of guilt and the waiver of his right to proof that he committed the elements of a crime. While courts receiving guilty pleas must insure the existence of a factual basis, as a safeguard against erroneous pleas, a factual basis is not an offer of proof, and guilty pleas need not be supported by an offer of proof, much less by actual evidence.
Nor does this difference between convictions acquired by plea and those actually proved at a trial place pleading defendants at a disadvantage or subject them to unequal treatment. Guilty pleas are entirely voluntary and may not be entered without the informed consent of the defendant. Defendants may condition their consent on both charge and sentence concessions and pre*904sumably will not consent to a plea arrangement unless they consider the conditions of the plea sufficiently advantageous. Should a sentence concession or recommendation not be followed by the court, the defendant is entitled to withdraw his plea and insist upon a trial. (The court's forty three year sentence in this case fell well below the agreed cumulative sentence cap of sixty years.)
Nor does the majority attempt to identify the particular evidence used to support each of the assault convictions in this case. Quite the contrary, it explains that the question of identical evidence for purposes of section 18-1-408(8) actually turns on the charges filed against the defendant and whether they are alleged to result from the same act. The effect of this proposition is, of course, not only to reinterpret the "identical evidence" requirement as referring to something other than the evidence actually used to prove each crime, but also to limit the element under consideration to the eriminal act alone.
Although we have previously upheld consecutive sentences for crimes committed as part of a single criminal episode upon a demonstration that they were supported by evidence of different criminal acts, see, e.g., People v. Muckle, 107 P.3d 380, 383 (Colo.2005); Qureshi v. Dist. Ct., 727 P.2d 45, 47 (Colo.1986), we have never before held that such crimes are considered to be supported by identical evidence within the meaning of section 18-1-408(8), and therefore require concurrent sentences, unless they are supported by evidence of different eriminal acts. On its face, the limiting prerequisite of "identical evidence" would seem to be avoided whenever separate convictions are supported by different evidence of any necessary component of an offense, including necessary surrounding cireumstances, mental states, absence of justification or excuse, or even motive. And until today, I do not believe we have ever suggested otherwise.
Since a single criminal act can clearly have more than one victim, it is difficult to square the majority rationale with the logic of the legislature's express treatment of criminal episodes involving multiple victims as falling outside the ban on consecutive sentences. See § 18-1-408(8). Even a single person can, of course, be victimized in substantially different ways by the same eriminal act, and it is not difficult to think of instances in which the legislature has chosen to separately punish harmful consequences, whether or not they were caused by a single criminal act. Can it be reasonable, for instance, to find a legislative intent that an arsonist must escape separate punishment for both arson and deliberate murder, merely because he chooses to commit murder by burning down his victim's house while the victim is asleep inside?
Both constitutional and statutory limitations prevent multiple convictions for offenses that are related in various ways. In the very statute at issue in this case, see § 18-1-408(1) and (5), the legislature has barred multiple convictions, for instance, whenever one offense is established by proof of the same or less than all the facts required to establish the commission of another, or whenever one offense differs from another only in the respect that a less serious injury or risk of injury to the same person, property, or public interest or a lesser kind of culpability suffices to establish its commission. These merger provisions represent policy choices concerning the definitions of and relationships among crimes. The ban of subsection (8) on consecutive sentences provides a further limitation based on the nature of the evidence actually relied on to prove each crime, and in my view, it should not be expanded beyond its intended purpose.
Because I believe the majority opinion expands the "identical evidence" prerequisite of section 18-1-408(8) beyond its intended purpose, I respectfully dissent.
Justice EID does not participate.