Court Opinion

ID: 9604563
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 02:23:34.88898+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:15:11.525917
License: Public Domain

*920QUINN, Chief Justice,
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent. The majority recognizes that the purposes of the compulsory joinder bar of section 18-1-408(2), 8B C.R.S. (1986), are “to protect the accused against the oppressive effect of sequential prosecutions based on conduct occurring during the same criminal episode and to conserve judicial and legal resources that otherwise would be wasted in duplicative proceedings,” maj. op. at 916 (quoting Jeffrey v. District Court, 626 P.2d 631, 637 (Colo.1981)), but then goes on to read into the “same criminal episode” the requirement that the multiple offenses either arise from “the same conduct of the defendant” or be so connected that “prosecution of the offenses will involve substantially interrelated proof.” Maj. op. at 918. This requirement which the majority gratuitously engrafts on the compulsory joinder bar defeats the very purpose of that statutory protection.
I.
I acknowledge, as does the majority, that the requirement of compulsory joinder is certainly broad enough to include separate offenses arising from essentially the same conduct, e.g., People v. Freeman, 196 Colo. 238, 583 P.2d 921 (1978); People v. Walker, 189 Colo. 545, 542 P.2d 1283 (1975), and in some situations different offenses involving substantially interrelated proof, e.g., People v. McCrary, 190 Colo. 538, 549 P.2d 1320 (1976), since such interrelated proof might well be indicative of a common plan or scheme. The protections of the compulsory joinder bar, however, go much further. The plain language of section 18-1-408(2) extends the compulsory joinder bar to offenses “based on the same act or series of acts arising from the same criminal episode.” If the legislature intended to limit the compulsory joinder bar to offenses arising from the “same conduct” or to offenses “involving substantially interrelated proof,” it clearly would have employed appropriate language expressive of those limiting concepts, especially since it has utilized similar terms of limitation in other sections of the Colorado Criminal Code.1
In Corr v. District Court, 661 P.2d 668 (Colo.1983), this court, in a unanimous opinion, interpreted the compulsory bar to apply to a prosecution in district court for possession of a marijuana concentrate seized by police officers during the defendant’s arrest for misdemeanor traffic offenses which were separately filed in county court and to which the defendant pled guilty. We initially noted in Corr that the test for the “same criminal episode” terminology in section 18-1-408(2) should be identical to the standard for the joinder of offenses under Crim.P. 8(a), “since both the statute and the rule employ practically identical language.” 661 P.2d at 673. We then observed that, for purposes of compulsory joinder, offenses arising out of “the same criminal episode” would include crimes committed simultaneously or in close sequence, crimes occurring in the same place or closely related places, and crimes that form part of a schematic whole, but hastened to add that the existence of all three components is not an indispensable prerequisite to compulsory joinder. *921661 P.2d at 673.2 In holding that the compulsory joinder bar of section 18-1-408(2) barred Corr’s prosecution for the drug offense, we stated:
We recognize that, in the last analysis, the determination of whether several criminal acts arise from the same criminal episode for purposes of the compulsory joinder statute depends upon an examination of the facts of the particular case. See, e.g., Jeffrey v. District Court, supra; Ruth v. County Court, 198 Colo. 6, 595 P.2d 237 (1979). Whatever may be the outer limits of section 18-1-408(2) and Crim. P. 8(a), a matter we need not decide here, we are satisfied that the term “same criminal episode” contemplates a joinder standard sufficiently broad to include offenses committed within the same unit of time at the same location, irrespective of whether these offenses are otherwise related to each other by some underlying unity of purpose or scheme. A narrower construction, in our view, would mean increased distress and expense to the accused from multiple prosecutions, as well as unnecessary expenditure of judicial, legal and community resources on duplicative proceedings with no demonstrable benefit in return. See II ABA Standards for Criminal Justice, Joinder and Severance, Standard 13-2.1, commentary at 13.12-13 (2d ed. 1980). It was to avoid these untoward consequences of multiple prosecutions that the compulsory joinder statute was enacted. See Comment, 1971 Perm.Supp., C.R.S.1963, 40-1-508. Because the charge of possession of a marijuana concentrate involved an act which occurred at practically the same time and in the same place as the offenses of speeding and driving under the influence, the marijuana charge arose out of the “same criminal episode” as those other offenses for purposes of the compulsory joinder statute.
Id. at 674 (footnote omitted).
Corr provides the controlling precedent for resolving this case, and the district court properly relied on that precedent in dismissing the felony drug charges as based on the same criminal episode as the misdemeanor offense of unlawful possession of raptor talons to which the defendant had previously entered a guilty plea in county court and was assessed a fine of $548.
II.
Under the majority’s construction of section 18-1-408(2), the defendant in this case conceivably could be charged in three sequential prosecutions, even though all offenses occurred at the defendant’s home, were committed at virtually the same time on September 5, 1985, and were based on the same fund of evidence acquired by the police in searching the defendant’s home on that date. For example, under such construction, the defendant could be initially prosecuted for cultivation of marijuana and *922conspiracy to commit that offense, since these offenses did not arise from the “same conduct” as the other offenses and would involve separate and independent proof based on the marijuana plants seized from the defendant’s garden and the several implements of cultivation recovered at the. defendant’s home. Upon completion of that prosecution, the defendant could then be prosecuted for possession of eight ounces or more of marijuana, based on the marijuana recovered from the dresser drawer in the bedroom of the defendant’s home, since this second prosecution would not involve the “same conduct” and could proceed independently of the proof admitted at the first trial. Finally, upon completion of the second prosecution, the defendant could then be subjected to a third prosecution for the unlawful possession of raptor talons, since this third prosecution would involve conduct different from the offenses in the former prosecutions and would also not require proof substantially interrelated with those prosecutions.
The majority's construction of section 18-1-408(2) thus invites the division of a criminal episode into separate units of prosecution that easily could be, and should be, consolidated into one prosecution. The compulsory joinder bar, in my view, was not intended to be such a fragile guarantee that a prosecutor may avoid its limitations by simply fragmenting a criminal episode into multiple prosecutions which, in reality, proceed from and amount to nothing less than an integrated and unitary whole. Such a construction effectuates the very harm which the statute was intended to prohibit. I would affirm the judgment of dismissal.

. See, e.g., § 18-l-302(l)(a)(II), 8B C.R.S. (1986) (prosecution for violation of different provision of law than former prosecution is barred, and also prosecution based on different facts is barred, when former prosecution results in acquittal or conviction and subsequent prosecution is for same conduct, unless offense in former prosecution and offense in subsequent prosecution each requires proof of fact not required by other and law defining each offense is intended to prevent substantially different harm or evil, or second offense was not consummated when former trial began); § 18-l-303(l)(a)(I), 8B C.R.S. (1986) (if conduct constitutes an offense within concurrent jurisdiction of Colorado and United States or another state or municipality, a prosecution in any of these jurisdictions is a bar to subsequent prosecution in Colorado when the first prosecution results in conviction or acquittal and the second prosecution is based on same conduct, unless offense for which defendant was formerly convicted or acquitted requires proof of fact not required by offense for which he is subsequently prosecuted and law defining each offense is intended to prevent substantially different harm or evil); § 18 — 1— 408(3), 8B C.R.S. (1986) (when two or more offenses are joined in one prosecution and are supported by identical evidence, the court upon application of defendant may require prosecution, at the conclusion of the evidence, to elect the count upon which issues shall be tried).

. The Corr opinion elaborated on this point as follows:
Given the salutary purposes of joinder, the coexistence of any one or two of these components might independently be sufficient, under appropriate circumstances, to permit the joinder of multiple offenses under the "same criminal episode" standard. We have previously held, for example, that offenses closely related in time and place qualify for joinder. See People v. Walker, 189 Colo. 545, 542 P.2d 1283 (1975) (charges of first degree assault and assault on a peace officer, both of which involved different victims, properly joined because they "arose out of the same continuous sequence of events closely related in time and distance”). So also, crimes committed at different times but in the same place and under similar circumstances have properly been joined. People v. Pickett, 194 Colo. 178, 571
P.2d 1078 (1977) (charge of felony menacing committed on May 2, 1975, properly joined with charge of illegal possession of weapon committed twenty-eight days later, both offenses occurring at the same location and involving a knife). We have also approved the joinder of crimes committed at different times and places but constituting part of a schematic whole. People v. McCrary, 190 Colo. 538, 549 P.2d 1320 (1976) (charge of kidnapping, based on abduction of waitress from doughnut shop in Lakewood, Colorado, and charge of murder, based upon killing of waitress sometime later in an isolated field while on the way to Cheyenne, Wyoming, properly joined as "arising out of the same transaction" under former version of Crim.P. 8(a)).
661 P.2d at 674.