Court Opinion

ID: 9789122
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 01:28:23.694416+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:19.739844
License: Public Domain

Justice COATS,
concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.
I fully agree that the trial court did not rely on any impermissible facts or abuse its discretion in sentencing the defendant. Unless, however, the majority intends a partial retreat from our holding in DeHerrera v. People, 122 P.3d 992 (Colo.2005), I fail to appreciate the significance of its discussion of Shepard v. United States, 544 U.S. 13, 125 S.Ct. 1254, 161 L.Ed.2d 205 (2005), and its concern for “the precise scope of the prior-conviction exception.” Maj op. at 633.
In DeHerrera this court held that “the existence of a prior conviction opens the aggravated sentencing range,” 122 P.3d at 994, and that an aggravated sentence based on a prior conviction, which we referred to as a Blakely-exempt factor, “ ‘is both constitutionally and statutorily sound, even if the sentencing judge also considered factors that were not Blakely-compliant or Blakely-exempt,’ ” DeHerrera, 122 P.3d at 993 (quoting Lopez v. People, 113 P.3d 713, 731 (Colo. 2005)). But see id. at 995-96 (Coats, J., concurring in the judgment only) (criticizing the notion of a moving “statutory maximum”). That being the case, the fact “of’ a prior conviction, under our sentencing regime, would seem to render superfluous any *635need to limit the extent to which “ ‘facts regarding prior convictions’ ” are Blakely-exempt. Maj. op. at 633 (quoting Lopez, 113 P.3d at 716).
If the existence of any prior conviction extends the range that is subject to traditional sentencing considerations to include the aggravated sentencing range of section 18-1.3-401, C.R.S. (2005), as we held in both DeHetrera and Lopez, then surely the fact “of’ a conviction renders constitutionally and statutorily permissible the consideration of any “unusual aspects of the defendant’s character, past conduct, habit, health, age, the events surrounding the crime, pattern of conduct which indicates whether the defendant is a serious danger to society, past convictions, and possibility of rehabilitation.” See DeHerrera, 122 P.3d at 994. And therefore, once a prior conviction is found to exist, factors like failing to complete sex offender treatment, violating a deferred judgment agreement, and committing the current sex offense while being supervised for another sex offense, upon which the court relied in this case, necessarily become appropriate factors for consideration.
By contrast, the sentencing scheme with which the United States Supreme Court dealt in Shepard was substantially different and more clearly involved a sentence enhancement based simply on a finding of fact. Unlike Colorado’s sentencing scheme, it did not permit a greater sentence whenever the court found some characteristic of the defendant or his crime to be extraordinarily aggravating, but rather provided an enhanced sentence only if the defendant had previously suffered a conviction of a specific kind. Shepard, 125 S.Ct. at 1257. The Supreme Court therefore described how the precise nature of a defendant’s prior convictions could be established in a constitutionally permissible manner, in the context of a guilty plea.
In the case before us today, the trial court found the existence of a prior conviction, a necessary predicate to its determination that the defendant was being supervised for a prior conviction when he attempted the instant sexual assault on a child. Unless the majority implies that the existence of a prior conviction (whether relied on to sentence beyond the presumptive range or not, see DeHerrera, 122 P.3d at 994) does not in fact “open[ ] the aggravated sentencing range” to traditional sentencing considerations, id., its discussion of the scope of the prior-conviction exception appears to be inconsequential, not only for the particular sentence in this case but for virtually any conceivable sentence in this jurisdiction. If that implication is actually intended, I would make it express.
I therefore concur in part and concur in the judgment.